TL;DR:
Over the past decade, we’ve seen a massive rise in live-service games with huge AAA budgets that close after failing to find an audience. […] Some studios are finally learning that live service is not always a guaranteed cash cow, and in retrospect Anthem feels like an early symptom of the carnage we’re seeing now. […] Too often, as we’ve seen from the staggering number of layoffs already in 2024, it’s the ordinary people, the rank-and-file developers, who are paying the price. Anthem may have been a warning, but unfortunately, it seems to have gone unheeded.
I actually liked Anthem, and I wish it would have gotten more support to fix some of the problems. I think it had way more potential than some other GAAS that have come out recently. (cough Suicide Squad cough)
The worst part about it for me was the really bad net code. Enemies would teleport around, shots wouldn’t register or register too late. And their relative damage system didn’t seem to work properly most of the time. It made the combat feel bad, but you could tell that the combat that was there would have felt amazing had the net code been refined a bit.
There were other smaller problems too, but nothing that couldn’t have been addressed in patches. It really is a shame EA gave up on the game.