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 was in the beta for Anthem and when I first joined in, I was expecting some kind of intro level.
Nope! Thrown to the wolves with other players who apparently had already done this a hundred times.
I’m still figuring out how to change weapons and the mission is 1/2 way over already.
I actually liked the mechanics.
But it crashed constantly and I never went back because I couldn’t play enough to get hooked.
Ha, reminds me of Warframe, where I started out playing a stealth assassin build. The first time I tried co-op I was shocked when the other three players finished the level within like 30 seconds.