Forgotten Shooter ‘Anthem’ Just Hit A Sad New Low
Have you ever heard the tragic story of Anthem? I didn’t think so. Electronic Arts wouldn’t tell you that.
It is a cautionary tale. It’s a warning to any publisher who thinks it’s a good idea for a developer known for their single-player RPGs (in the case of Mass Effect/Dragon Age studio BioWare) and forces them into making a generic live service loot gun.
Anthemswiftly was released in 2019. It wasn’t a terrible game. It was a BioWare title, so it had many good things. It was unpolished and clunky, and it was deathly dull.
The game had tiny to do, and players quickly lost interest. EA and BioWare talked about releasing significant updates to the game to win back players, but it never happened. Anthem was shut down in 2021.
Anthem is a ghost town this day, but we hoped that the game could have died with some dignity. Fanbyte reports that one TikToker was allowed to enter GameStop to purchase the three-year-old video game for just a penny.
“So I went to GameStop, and they had Arnhem for a ficking penny,” ClockLava explains in their video. “I was shocked when I saw this penny.
It was. Anthem was so inexpensive that GameStop was so happy to transfer a copy that ClockLava’s employee gave them a penny from their pocket.
Kotaku points out that GameStop routinely sells older/less desirable products at a penny. This is known as “pennying out” and refers to when a product has been on the shelves for the last time before employees decide it’s worthless. It’s easier and cheaper to throw away the rest. Yikes.
