Fan Server For Defunct Anthem Is Unlikely To Reach Release — Frostbite Proving A Major Obstacle

The Anthem community has acknowledged that efforts to revive the game’s servers are progressing far more slowly than expected. After the official servers were shut down on January 12, 2026, fans managed to launch only a limited test prototype, showcased in a video, but further progress has proven extremely difficult. Members of the project shared these details in an interview with Ars Technica.

The initiative to bring Anthem back began in the summer of 2025, shortly after the shutdown was announced. The project is being handled by a small group of volunteers gathered in a Discord community called The Fort’s Forge. The project’s administrator, Lori, openly admits that the initial motivation was emotional rather than practical.

A recent video demonstrating a test run of the game on an emulated server sparked a wave of optimism among fans, but the developers behind the effort are deliberately trying to keep expectations in check. The main problem remains the Frostbite engine, which Anthem uses differently from other EA titles, making it extremely difficult to adapt for standalone operation without the original server infrastructure.

According to the team, much of Anthem’s logic was designed from the ground up to run in a server-based environment, even in areas that appear to be single-player content. While some data does seem to remain on the client side, the game’s behavior is highly inconsistent: NPCs fail to spawn on some maps, while on others only certain systems function, and the reasons for this are still unclear.

Despite these challenges, some members of the project remain cautiously optimistic and believe that restoring Anthem is technically possible. However, even in the best-case scenario, the process would take months rather than resulting in a near-term revival. The team emphasizes that the project is driven purely by enthusiasm, and no one is prepared to guarantee results or regular updates.

For now, the fan-run Anthem server remains an experiment, and its future depends entirely on whether the community can overcome Frostbite’s complexities and maintain motivation over the long term.

Earlier, the current head of GOG, Michał Kiciński, also spoke about the challenges of preserving games. He described the Stop Killing Games initiative — which recently gathered enough signatures to be brought before the European Parliament — as risky and not always practical, arguing that supporting online games is incredibly difficult.