Anthem, a live-service game, performed poorly and will become unplayable when servers shut down in January next year. Live-service titles can be discontinued if they fail to generate sufficient revenue, eliminating the incentive to keep servers running. Peer-to-peer host migration can reduce reliance on central servers by allowing one player's machine to act as host, but such systems are complex, costly, and can increase latency or reduce visual fidelity. Debates about game preservation are growing, with movements like Stop Killing Games and concerns about distribution choices such as Switch 2 Game-Key Cards highlighting the consequences of server shutdowns.
Anthem, being a live-service game, could easily have shut down at some point in time even if it had been incredibly successful. That's just the nature of the format: If there's not enough money being made, there's no incentive to keep servers running. The reality that we're currently in is one where Anthem performed incredibly poorly, and as of next year, will be completely unplayable.
"Anthem could have been built in a way where this wouldn't be necessary," Darrah said. As an example of what he means, he pointed to Destiny and how it has "sophisticated bits of technology for host migration," and the fact that it's peer-to-peer--meaning one computer can act as a server for another without the need for a central server. "We didn't know how to do that, and we frankly couldn't afford to do that," Darrah continued. "But we could have done something."
Collection
[
|
...
]