Well that didn't take long. Anthem's been dead for what, two weeks? And someone's already got it running on a private server. Honestly, I'm impressed.
So here's what went down. BioWare officially pulled the plug on Anthem earlier this month, shutting down all the official servers and basically turning everyone's copy into a fancy paperweight. The game had a rough life - launched in 2019 with tons of hype, crashed and burned pretty spectacularly, and limped along for years before EA finally put it out of its misery in January 2026.
But some dedicated fan out there wasn't ready to say goodbye. They've apparently managed to reverse-engineer the server code and get a private server up and running. Players who still have the game installed can supposedly connect and fly around Fort Tarsis again, though I'm hearing it's pretty bare bones right now. No word yet on whether all the content is accessible or if it's just the basic framework.
This kind of thing happens with dead MMOs sometimes. Remember when City of Heroes got resurrected? Or all those vanilla WoW servers before Blizzard made it official? The difference here is the speed - usually it takes months or years for the community to crack the code. Two weeks has got to be some kind of record.
EA and BioWare haven't said anything about this yet, but I wouldn't hold your breath for an official blessing. They tend to get pretty lawyer-happy about private servers. Still, for anyone who actually enjoyed Anthem (all twelve of you), this might be your chance to take one last flight in those javelins.
Fred
Shooters — FPS, tactical, battle royale, competitive multiplayer