BioWare's troubled online role-playing game Anthem will no longer see further development, after a new report from Bloomberg confirms that EA's executives have decided that, based on the current state of the game, combined with the COVID-19 situation, further work on the game is "impossible."

The news was confirmed by BioWare Austin's Christian Dailey, who stated that, while progress was still made for all projects during 2020, not everything planned was possible without putting "undue stress" on teams.  "I know this will be disappointing to the community of Anthem players who have been excited to see the improvements we’ve been working on. It’s also disappointing for the team who were doing brilliant work. And for me personally, Anthem is what brought me to BioWare, and the last two years have been some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences of my career." 

The game will still keep working, and BioWare has committed to keep the servers online for now, but the game's planned resurgence has come to an abrupt end. Anthem has been struggling ever since it's troubled launch a year ago, and despite the departure of several key names, BioWare seemed keen to keep going on the project, presumably still hopeful they could recoup some of their massive investment into the game. 

6 months ago they began revamping the game, with developers referring to it internally as "Anthem 2.0" or "Anthem Next." It seems that was too little, too late though, with Anthem's reputation damaged by gameplay issues and bugs. It's not entirely surprising though, BioWare has a lot on their plate right now with a new Mass Effect and Dragon Age 4 both in the works, so something had to give. Indeed, Dailey confirmed that those two games are now the priority;

"We need to laser focus our efforts as a studio and strengthen the next Dragon Age, and Mass Effect titles while continuing to provide quality updates to Star Wars: The Old Republic." Finally, he thanked fans for their loyalty to the game, stating "thank you for your passion and creativity, your feedback and suggestions most certainly help shape the team’s direction, and on a personal note, your kindness and encouragement were much needed last year."