Anthemhas faced its fair share of criticism since its launch last month, but one of the main points of contention that dedicated players have against the game is its loot drops. Many feel as thoughAnthem’s loot drops, particularly when it comes to endgame content, are lacking, making it a serious grind to get any quality loot in the game. Abug famously improved the loot dropsinAnthembefore BioWare “fixed” it, and now fans are calling for the bug to come back as they protest the game’s loot drop system in a boycott.
The boycott has been organized on Reddit by user Afinda, and it asks players upset byAnthem’s loot drops to stop playing the game from now until March 15. The post has been met with enthusiasm fromAnthem’s Reddit community, earning over 10,000 upvotes at the time of this writing, and so it does appear to have a decent amount of support.
The planned boycott is not terribly long, but those participating hope it will get their point across. They hope that even though the boycott is only planned for a short amount of time that it will “hurt"Anthem, asthe game relies on microtransactionsto support its live service economy. The idea behind it is that if less people are playingAnthem, BioWare will make less money from the game, and will be convinced to improve loot drops to bring players back.
Whether or not this boycott is successful remains to be seen. The vast majority ofAnthemplayers are likely unaware that it even exists, and will just keep playing the game as normal. However, it’s possibleAnthemcould still lose those players because of its poor loot drops, or they may move on to other games, like the upcomingDivision 2, which is aimed at the same audience.
With itspoor review scoresand growing list of controversies, BioWare has had an uphill battle when it comes toAnthemsince the game’s launch. Even a small boycott is the last thing thatAnthemneeds right now, and so it will be interesting to see if BioWare responds to it at all.
In the meantime, BioWare will no doubt continue trying to makeAnthema better experience in an effort to turn its misfortunes around. Whether or not it achieves that goal in time to keep too many people from leavingAnthemremains to be seen, however.
Anthemis out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
