Is Anthem playing games with us?

Bioware’s latest game Anthem is catching a lot of flack for many things but one thing is drawing people’s ire in particular, and that is the game’s “tiered” release date and complex (read: nonsensical) editions and rewards.

Don’t get us wrong, best of luck to Anthem and everyone loves Bioware so no one is wishing it ill. But it definitely makes people ask questions when initial beta access is granted on February 1 and the game is actually released on February 22. This isn’t without all of the other tiers of access that occurred before official release either.

What do release dates mean anymore?

As Kotaku asks, what do release dates mean anymore? Not a whole lot of anything if Anthem (and others) are to be used as examples. And, really, this isn’t a good trend in the video game industry. Aside from pushing out more (and possibly less quality) games, tiered releases don’t really benefit anyone other than publishers. What’s really interesting is that, even though it started the party on February 1, the game is still struggling to get a foothold with gaming audiences. The more hyperbolic among us have even started to question Bioware’s intentions and lofty position as a vaunted developer of games.

So why all of the skepticism now? It isn’t like this is something new and that Anthem is the first in the industry to do this kind of thing.

Well, Fallout 76 might have a lot to do with it. Not only is this game a mess months after release, but also it shows no sign of improving anytime soon. Calling it a cash grab might be an extreme insult, but the longer it continues without any compelling reason to play it, the more it looks like that is the case.

Fallout 76 a cash grab for Bethesda?

Conspiracy theorists surmise that Bethesda pushed out Fallout 76 so early and so aggressively because it needed money to develop its other gaming properties. While we don’t think Anthem is desperate for cash to fund a sequel, we can’t help but notice that a lot of huge publishers like EA are putting pressure on developers to turn out huge titles more quickly than ever before.

Which brings us back to the central question: Is Anthem playing games with us?

There’s little doubt that companies use early access and sales as a way to gauge a potential audience for a game. This is probably the case with Anthem but there is also every bit of evidence that the devs are in it for the long haul.

Lower-quality triple-A games at launch?

That said, there’s little reason to disincentivise gamers from buying things early or for paying for early access. Outside of loot boxes and in-game monetisation options, this trend is probably not going to go away anytime soon. The only issue with this is that it makes release dates pointless and really muddies the whole marketing point of having set dates for street drops.

Could this result in lower quality games “at launch” in the future? It’s possible, and the more triple-A titles that practice this will only pave the way for that.