By Issy van der Velde

Copyright gamesradar

Skip to main content

Close main menu

GamesRadar+
The Games, Movies, TV & Comics You Love

View Profile

Search GamesRadar+

Xbox Series X

Nintendo Switch

Nintendo Switch 2

Tabletop Gaming

Toys & Collectibles

Retro Gamer

Newsletters

Total Film

Gaming Magazines

Why subscribe?

Subscribe from just £3
Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
Try a single issue or save on a subscription
Issues delivered straight to your door or device

From£9.99Subscribe now

Hollow Knight Silksong
Dying Light: The Beast
Battlefield 6
New Games for 2025

Don’t miss these

Third Person Shooters
Mass Effect veteran says open-world bot flop Anthem gained momentum within EA because the pitch was “what if BioWare game but it could do FIFA numbers?”

Third Person Shooters
“It isn’t Destiny. It isn’t Borderlands. It isn’t Mass Effect”: Ex BioWare lead says Anthem’s vision for “the future of storytelling” struggled to come together because it had “no one really clearly saying what it is”

Action RPGs
BioWare veteran says “flying is Anthem’s best feature” but also its “worst feature” because it broke the game, and reckons Monster Hunter is a great example of how to add “really crazy things” without the broken part

Third Person Shooters
As Anthem faces shutdown amid Stop Killing Games movement, producer says maybe we want to “sacrifice some things in order to get it so that games don’t just vanish one day”

Mass Effect
Mass Effect 5 devs should use Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a “scapegoat” so they can “get what they need” from EA, says former BioWare exec

BioWare apparently wanted to make a Mass Effect-style remaster collection for Dragon Age, but EA’s not too keen: “It’s strange for a publicly traded company to basically be against free money”

Architect of Sony’s disastrous ‘live-service push’ says failures are good actually, because now there’s “more rigorous and more frequent testing”

Third Person Shooters
Helldivers 2 players are blaming everything from bugs, to the other kind of bugs, to Arrowhead itself for them failing the latest Major Order: “The caves did things and it was not pretty”

Subnautica 2 publisher says the studio’s previous game was a “failure” – a strategy game that’s nothing like Subnautica and peaked at under 1,000 Steam players

Almost 11 years since launching Destiny 1, former Bungie CEO says live service isn’t right for all games: “It’s pretty clear that we can’t just pick a business model and say that’s a reason to make a game”

Third Person Shooters
Helldivers 2 CEO just comes out and says it: “The technical debt is crippling” and “we didn’t hit the mark” with Into the Unjust update, so Arrowhead is “trying to get our s*** in order”

Third Person Shooters
Helldivers 2 CEO knows “we’re not getting a passing grade on performance and stability” right now, but another 60-day action plan wouldn’t be enough to fix everything

Dragon Age: Origins was “intended as a standalone game” rather than the first in a series of RPGs, former dev says, meaning BioWare left “a lot of threads” it wasn’t expecting to “come back to”

Third Person Shooters
Helldivers 2 players fume over performance issues, Arrowhead CEO admits “it’s not good enough” but promises “a fix for some of the most immediate things is being prepped”

Marathon is delayed, but don’t worry, Bungie says it just has to work on the AI, loot, combat, graphics, narrative, playlists, prox chat, and oops that’s the whole game isn’t it?

Action RPGs

Former BioWare producer says a lot of Anthem’s problems “come from a misunderstanding about multiplayer games,” which the Mass Effect leadership team weren’t equipped to deal with

Issy van der Velde

10 September 2025

Sounds like there were plenty of issues

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: EA / BioWare)

Anthem had the might of EA and the talent of Mass Effect’s team at BioWare behind it, so why didn’t it work out? Well, former EA executive producer Mark Darrah says a lot of the things that are wrong with the game “come from a misunderstanding about multiplayer games.”

In a new video posted to his YouTube channel, Darrah reveals a lot about his time working on the game. “This was the team that made Mass Effect. Mass Effect 1, 2, and 3. They’ve been together a really long time,” he explains.
“They have a particular way of working together. And for most of that time, they worked for and with Casey Hudson. This is a team that knew how to make single-player action RPG storytelling games.”

You may like

Mass Effect veteran says open-world bot flop Anthem gained momentum within EA because the pitch was “what if BioWare game but it could do FIFA numbers?”

“It isn’t Destiny. It isn’t Borderlands. It isn’t Mass Effect”: Ex BioWare lead says Anthem’s vision for “the future of storytelling” struggled to come together because it had “no one really clearly saying what it is”

BioWare veteran says “flying is Anthem’s best feature” but also its “worst feature” because it broke the game, and reckons Monster Hunter is a great example of how to add “really crazy things” without the broken part

It certainly seemed odd when the developer, known for Mass Effect and Dragon Age, both single-player RPGs, announced it would be making a live-service multiplayer title. Naughty Dog actually scrapped its Last of Us multiplayer game specifically because it didn’t want to transition to a live-service company.

What Happened on Anthem – The Mark Darrah Years (Part 2 2017-2019) – YouTube

“When you look at some of the things that are wrong with Anthem, they come from a misunderstanding about multiplayer games and live-service games versus single-player storytelling games. The way that storytelling is structured in Anthem doesn’t understand that there are other people along with you that can mess up the storytelling.”
This is a big issue I’ve often had with a lot of MMOs and multiplayer titles. How can I be the chosen one who’s going to save the world when there are a dozen people queuing up in front of the same NPC as my character?
As well as the storytelling, “The economy doesn’t take into account that it needs to be able to last for a very long time. That balance matters in a live-service game a lot more than it matters in a single-player game.”

Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.
Darrah notes that these issues were eventually discovered, but “because, in classic BioWare style, the game was only coming together in the last few months, they weren’t obvious in the code until it was often much too late to fix it.”
Darrah also claims that developers in Austin were “screaming” about these issues for a long time, trying to draw attention to the end game, too, but “because the leadership had become dysfunctional because these communication channels have been damaged between Edmonton and Austin, that wasn’t really being heard.”
That’s not the only thing he blames leadership for. He also says that while the core leaders were clearly skilled, since they’d made Mass Effect 2, BioWare’s highest-rated game, “there was a conflation of expertise in game making, which they had, and understanding games they had played, which they had, into a belief in an expertise in game-making for a kind of game they had never made but had played.”
All of this, combined with the scale of the project and the fact a lot of things simply weren’t written down meant that by the time Darrah joined, he had to make a lot of assumptions about how it all worked.
But hey, at least we can all agree the flying was great.
In the meantime, check out the best online games that are still alive and kicking.

See more Xbox One News

PlayStation

Issy van der Velde

Social Links Navigation
Contributor

I’m Issy, a freelancer who you’ll now occasionally see over here covering news on GamesRadar. I’ve always had a passion for playing games, but I learned how to write about them while doing my Film and TV degrees at the University of Warwick and contributing to the student paper, The Boar. After university I worked at TheGamer before heading up the news section at Dot Esports. Now you’ll find me freelancing for Rolling Stone, NME, Inverse, and many more places. I love all things horror, narrative-driven, and indie, and I mainly play on my PS5. I’m currently clearing my backlog and loving Dishonored 2.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.

Mass Effect veteran says open-world bot flop Anthem gained momentum within EA because the pitch was “what if BioWare game but it could do FIFA numbers?”

“It isn’t Destiny. It isn’t Borderlands. It isn’t Mass Effect”: Ex BioWare lead says Anthem’s vision for “the future of storytelling” struggled to come together because it had “no one really clearly saying what it is”

BioWare veteran says “flying is Anthem’s best feature” but also its “worst feature” because it broke the game, and reckons Monster Hunter is a great example of how to add “really crazy things” without the broken part

As Anthem faces shutdown amid Stop Killing Games movement, producer says maybe we want to “sacrifice some things in order to get it so that games don’t just vanish one day”

Mass Effect 5 devs should use Dragon Age: The Veilguard as a “scapegoat” so they can “get what they need” from EA, says former BioWare exec

BioWare apparently wanted to make a Mass Effect-style remaster collection for Dragon Age, but EA’s not too keen: “It’s strange for a publicly traded company to basically be against free money”

Latest in Action RPGs

Elden Ring Nightreign’s Deep of Night mode is out today, and it’s “high-difficulty” even by FromSoftware standards: new red-tier gear, 3 more relic slots, and uber-buffed enemies

BioWare veteran says “flying is Anthem’s best feature” but also its “worst feature” because it broke the game, and reckons Monster Hunter is a great example of how to add “really crazy things” without the broken part

Elden Ring Nightreign just got its biggest patch ever, and it’s probably the most generous batch of buffs FromSoftware has ever given – even if the community’s favorite OP legendaries got wrecked

Hollow Knight: Silksong borrows The Last of Us and Death Stranding’s cruelest trick by making safe zones unsafe, and it’s breaking fans more than any boss could: “This is the most anger I have ever felt for any game ever”

Early look at Borderlands 4 disappears and reappears after fans spot “a huge spoiler” about a returning character, but somehow Conan O’Brien crashing the game was kept in

Beefy Borderlands 4 system requirements promise “solid performance on older PC hardware,” but after Randy Pitchford’s warnings about “realistic expectations” I’m starting to feel a little scared

Latest in News

Former BioWare producer says a lot of Anthem’s problems “come from a misunderstanding about multiplayer games,” which the Mass Effect leadership team weren’t equipped to deal with

After 14 years of requests, legendary roguelike The Binding of Isaac finally adds item descriptions in new update: “You can finally read stuff while playing a video game, like some kinda nerd”

“Less poo, more Shakespeare”: Baldur’s Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke had to ask the RPG’s writing team for more variety over Vicious Mockery’s many silly insults

D&D Horrified is the perfect board game to kick off spooky season, and it has me in the Halloween mood

Olaf actor Josh Gad has had a “preview” of Frozen 3, but he hasn’t heard any songs yet: “It’s pretty extraordinary what they’re doing”

Less than a day after the Dune: Awakening Chapter 2 launch, Funcom rolls out a quick hotfix addressing “the mother of all bugs” that saw Deep Desert loot respawning “every 0.5 seconds”

GAME REVIEWS
MOVIE REVIEWS

This enormous exploration board game won’t be for everyone, but it’s a masterclass in narrative and sandbox gameplay

Hollow Knight Silksong review: “Worth the wait and then some, this isn’t just more Hollow Knight but an evolved, spindly beast all its own – even if it’s fiddly at times”

Cronos: The New Dawn review: “An unabashed mash-up of survival horror greatest hits, from Dead Space to Silent Hill, with plenty of its own gory ideas”

This gorgeously weird monster board game warms my Halloween-loving heart, and it’s a delight

Lost Soul Aside review: “We (don’t) have Final Fantasy Versus 13 at home”

The Conjuring: Last Rites review: “Not bold or memorable enough for the Warrens’ final chapter”

Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle review: “Roars past Mugen Train as Demon Slayer’s best adventure yet”

The Long Walk review: “One of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made”

Frankenstein review: “A classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation”

Weapons review: “A twisted fairytale that bests Barbarian”

Wednesday season 2 part 2 review: “Ortega shines, but it’s a zombie who steals the entire show”

Peacemaker season 2 review: “Darker and sadder than the first year, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had with the 11th Street Kids.”

Wednesday season 2 part 1 review: “Complex and exciting but weighed down by too many subplots”

Alien: Earth review: “Arguably the franchise’s strongest outing since James Cameron’s Aliens”

King of the Hill season 14 review: “Hank Hill himself has evolved into a much more open and accepting person”

GamesRadar+ is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

Contact Future’s experts

Terms and conditions

Privacy policy

Cookies policy

Advertise with us

Review guidelines

Write for us

Accessibility Statement

Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury,

BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.

Please login or signup to comment

Please wait…