“Anthem” is the last victim of video games. What should end -of -life care for games look like?
Electronic arts and Bioware Will Sunset his online multiplayer game Anthem On January 12, which makes him obsolete. “”Anthem Was designed to be a title only online, so once the servers are offline, the game will no longer be playable, “wrote Bioware in the ad. On August 15, the game will disappear from the Playlist of EA Play.
Currently, players cannot buy money in the game, but they can spend what they have until the servers are offline. Bioware developers who work Anthem Will not be dismissed following the end of the game. The news of the game closes while the industry, already passing through an upheaval, faces increased pressure from players to create “end of life” plans for service games.
AnthemThe development lasted almost seven years, during which the game fought by major redirects. Its launch in 2019 was widely turned by criticism, which described it as uneven in its execution, riddled with bugs and tedious. While Bioware and EA had initially planned to revise the game after the launch, a company known as Following hymn—Bioware canceled the project in 2021, quoting COVID-19, to focus on other games. Its live service continued to operate.
Online, fans on places like EA official forums require an “offline mode” that would allow them to play Anthem Even without the servers. “Closing and completely removing a game in which people have put money (especially without reimbursement) is a worrying and dangerous precedent,” wrote a player. “If you bought a game, you should be able to play it.” Another player wrote that “leave games like Anthem The completely disappearance also sends a dangerous message: that live games are disposable, regardless of the time or money that players have invested. »»
Video games disappear for many reasons, whether license problems, the lost code or the physical media becoming unplayable. The developer’s decision to finish AnthemThe support of the server server testifies to a problem specifically combined by Stop Killing Games, a movement of consumption outside the European Union which maintains that this practice destroys certain titles unnecessarily. “An increasing number of video games are sold effectively as goods – without declared expiration date – but designed to be completely unplayable as soon as the publisher’s support ends,” said the campaign website. This practice, according to the organizers of the movement, “not only harms customers, but makes preservation effectively impossible.”
Stop killing the games can do nothing to stop the disappearance of Anthem. The organization is based on petitions and tries to request a government intervention – shareholders who could not achieve the results before January. However, says the founder Ross Scott, the sunset is “exactly the kind we try to prevent”. The goal is to “break the cycle so that it does not continue to happen for future games”.
For Scott and the other members of Stop Killing Games, destroying a video game – a bit like destroying each copy of a book, an album or a film – is equivalent to “a cultural loss for the company”, according to the group’s website. “Although a less recognized support, video games always deserve to have basic protections against the complete and deliberate destruction of many of his works.” What they want is that companies have backup plans that allow living games in a playable format even if they must be put off line.
