If BioWare wasn’t worried enough about getting brought out behind the shed and given a “look at the flowers” line from Electronic Arts before, they’re probably sweating bullets now. Why? Anthem is literally bricking consoles, according to various reports being posted across social media.
There’s literally a public service announcement over on Anthem sub-reddit from a user warning gamers about playing the game on the PS4 until BioWare issues a fix.
On March 3rd, 2019, user TheMadTitanGauntlet wrote…
“PSA to any Anthem players on Playstation that experience complete shut downs of their consoles: STOP PLAYING! […]
“My playstation has been completely bricked to the point of not even turning on because of Anthem. I’m not looking for any sympathy or anything. This post is mainly being made to warn people that this could potentially damage your console to the dreaded point of no return. I’ve been talking on the phone with Playstation support for a little over 2 hours now,but unfortunately theres nothing they can do (or nothing they’re willing to do). At this point I dont know if I’m going to continue playing on Xbox one (haven’t had any problems with the console shutting down while playing but problems may arrive in the future) or to stop playing all together until Bioware addresses this issue.”
Hundreds of people noted having a similar problem, and one user noted that this was causing them to receive: System Software Error CE-36329-3
Some diehard fanboys have been trying to argue away the issue in a bid to protect BioWare, because they likely fear that this could speed up the studio’s demise.
But even with a thread full of people noting their consoles were getting bricked, it wasn’t the only one.
Earlier in the day on March 3rd, 2019, another thread with more than 1.4k upvotes was also posted in the sub-reddit, with hundreds of comments discussing the issue where someone stated that Anthem is the only game that causes their PS4 to shut down.
But that wasn’t even the first time that it happened.
Back on March 1st, 2019 another user also had a post explaining that the game was completely bricking the PS4. The post wasn’t upvoted much, despite the fact that the post brought a receipt in the form of a video from Brad Shoemaker from Giant Bomb mentioning the problem on the Bombcast.
This post was likely not upvoted much because it was during the launch of the game and users didn’t want to raise awareness of an issue that would likely result in the game losing sales and further moving BioWare closer to a timely demise.
However, regardless of what the upvotes were like on social media, the issue had spread out enough to catch attention from Sony. Even fans of the game had to report on the consoles bricking PS4s and Sony’s response, as noted in the video from Salvaje Cartel.
As noted in the video and various other outlets, Sony is apparently issuing refunds. The refunds are only for the digital version of the game, though, according to GameRant.
The refunds, however, are only for the game, not the console. So if Anthem manages to completely destroy your console and you get a refund for the game, you’ll be out of a game and a console. At least you’ll get back what you put into the game, though.
Anthem is available right now for PS4, PC, and Xbox One. There has yet to be any word or announcements about fixes from BioWare at the time of writing this article.
(Thanks for the news tip Rala Cloft)
