10 Video Game Embarrassments You Won't Believe
9. EA Forced Anthem To Release After Just 15 Months Of Development
It's a damn shame that Anthem never got whipped into shape, as though BioWare's multiplayer action-RPG had a ton of potential in the live service space.
Its content-lacking, mechanically clunky launch led EA to announce that the game was to receive a substantial gameplay overhaul, but in February 2021, a year after this announcement, EA confirmed that all development on Anthem had ceased and the game was effectively dead.
Now, numerous deep-dive investigative pieces have been written about Anthem's extremely troubled development over the years, but back in May, former Anthem developer Ian Saterdalen revealed on Twitter that the entire game was created in just 15 months.
Though Anthem had been in development since 2012, it was iterated upon numerous times before the version which eventually released entered full production.
The final game was made in 15 months with BioWare employees apparently working 90-hour weeks to get the job done - a timeframe which Saterdalen called "unheard of for a game of that scope."
And he's absolutely right. Anthem's end result is in no way a poor reflection on the developers who clearly worked incredibly hard on it, but rather higher-ups at EA who felt compelled to rush the AAA tentpole to market long before it was ready.
That they did so while grinding BioWare's team to dust isn't just embarrassing - it's absolutely unhinged in an era of games development where AAA games can easily take five years to bring to market.