Anthem producer Mark Darrah has revealed that local server code existed in the game’s development build right up until a few months before launch – and may still be salvageable – as the Stop Killing Games initiative responded to this week’s final server shutdown as an example of exactly what the campaign exists to address.
Here’s the context: Anthem, BioWare‘s always-online loot shooter, went completely dark this week when its servers shut down – a move that left every copy of the game completely unplayable even for those who already own it. The shutdown lands at a pointed moment: Stop Killing Games has spent close to two years building a campaign arguing that players should have a voice in whether they get to keep a game they paid for, and that customers – not companies – should have the final say on when they are done with a game. The campaign’s EU petition has come to a successful close, according to reporting on the initiative’s founder. You can see how the broader wave of online service closures is playing out across platforms in our coverage of PlayStation’s August 2026 online shutdowns.
Darrah’s comments, drawn from a post-mortem video he published and revisited in a nearly four-hour compilation posted this week, add a concrete technical dimension to a debate that often stays abstract. Darrah explained that Anthem actually had local server code running in a development environment right up until a few months before launch – the kind of architecture that would allow one player’s machine to host the session rather than requiring dedicated servers to stay live indefinitely.
Darrah explained that this approach was directly tied to the long-term cost equation: remove the dependency on dedicated servers and you remove the ongoing operational expense that eventually forces a shutdown decision. The local server code, he said, was present right up until a few months before launch. Darrah had envisioned that a plan for the game’s future – which he believed could have delivered a No Man’s Sky-style recovery – would have included locally hosted servers, something that already partially existed during development.
Honestly, this is the most useful thing to emerge from Anthem‘s shutdown in years, and not because the code will necessarily be recovered. What Darrah is describing is the decision architecture that publishers make – or don’t make – early in development, long before anyone is thinking about end-of-life. The local server functionality existed, and now the game is gone. The Stop Killing Games account responded to headlines around Darrah’s comments by stating that end-of-life plans for games like this is what the initiative is about. In a follow-up post, the account argued that the principle is straightforward: if you put money into a game, you should have a voice on whether you get to keep it, and the customer – not the company – should have the final say as to when they are done with a game.
What remains unclear is whether the surviving Anthem local server code still works. Darrah acknowledged he does not know if it still functions, though he noted the code is there to be salvaged and recovered. For context on what permanent loss of access means in practice, our piece on PlayStation’s physical game sunset timeline toward 2028 covers the ownership stakes from a different angle.
With the Stop Killing Games EU petition now successfully closed, attention turns to what comes next for the campaign and the broader debate over what obligations publishers carry when they shut down a game players have paid for.
Follow our ongoing coverage of the Stop Killing Games campaign for the latest developments as the debate over game preservation and player rights continues.
