Anthem’s Servers Are Off, Consoles Are Down, and Bethesda Is Struggling

Anthem’s servers are officially offline - bringing BioWare’s live-service experiment to a planned and permanent end.In this episode of the Day One Patch Podcast, we look back at Anthem’s scheduled shutdown, its final hours online, and what its legacy says about the risks of games-as-a-service titles. We also break down Bobby Kotick’s recent claims that declining Call of Duty and console sales prove Activision Blizzard was right to sell to Microsoft - and why parts of that argument are being questioned.We then dive into new comments from Bethesda’s former Elder Scrolls loremaster, who opened up about internal communication breakdowns, broken promises, and why he ultimately left the studio. His comments shed new light on Starfield’s troubled development and the creative direction The Elder Scrolls VI almost took.Plus, in this week’s Video Game Fun Fact, we rewind to the strange and often forgotten history of Call of Duty on handhelds - from the Nintendo DS era spin-offs to how they stacked up against their console counterparts.