If you were interested in trying out Anthem this weekend, you may have had to wait to check the game out. Ever since the demo went live, it has been plagued with issues. It became so bad that Origin itself was having problems; you couldn’t log in to your EA account, and other EA titles were affected as well. It took EA and Bioware the whole day to get its issues fixed. Some of the major issues included not being able to access the demo at all or even get past the title screen and players not being able to access their Anthem VIP friends code; one of the bigger issues other than getting in was an infinite loading screen when you launched the game or went on an expedition. Here is a breakdown of how everything unfolded today.
When nobody was able to get in the game, a quick solution to this was EA providing more servers so more players can fit into the game. The influx of players trying to play the game caused servers to get “slammed”, according to EA Global Community Manager Jesse Anderson.
Servers are getting SLAMMED for the #AnthemGame VIP demo right now. The team is working on it as we speak.
— Jesse Anderson (@Darokaz) January 25, 2019
After hours of players not being able to play, Casey Hudson tweeted out that the issue that was affecting the game wasn’t a server issue but something that had never come up in their private testing. During this time, Origin was having its problems as well.
Turns out to not be a server capacity issue. Seems to be a different issue that didn’t come up in previous scale testing. Teams are on it… https://t.co/nnDi2xK1s6
— Casey Hudson (@CaseyDHudson) January 25, 2019
Eventually, EA was able to fix the login problem with Origin, and was able to get the PC and PS4 versions of the beta to work first. Obviously, this didn’t really go well with Xbox players.
The main issue impacting the Anthem VIP demo on PC and PS4 has been resolved. Anyone who has had an issue on those platforms should restart the game and attempt to join again. Our team is still working on fixes for some of the issues we’re seeing on Xbox One.
— EA Help (@EAHelp) January 26, 2019
EA provided an update with the Xbox issues at around 9:37 pm PST. It took them the whole day to fix the demo so that players can try the game out. While there are still reports of the same issues happening, EA has provided a place where it will provide updates on the demo. Hopefully, things will go more smoothly from here and EA could extend the demo, as many gamers requested it after what happened today.
We’ve made some changes that should improve Xbox connectivity for the #AnthemVIP demo. If you’re running into issues try restarting your Xbox.
— EA Help (@EAHelp) January 26, 2019