PlayStation 4 owners are reporting that BioWare’s new game, Anthem, has bugs severe enough that the game is forcing their consoles to shut down. In rare cases, some players are claiming that Anthem’s crashes are “bricking” their PS4s, rendering them unusable. This past week, the Anthem subreddit has been rife with reports of severe crashes. “When encountering a crash or game error, sometimes I get booted to the main menu or out of the game completely to the PS4 dashboard,” Reddit user forthemasters wrote. “But twice now when trying to matchmake my PS4 has completely turned off. Don’t worry about the loot patch ffs, sort the bugs out first please.” That post has more than 1,400 upvotes on Reddit. A “public service announcement” from another Anthem player has racked up more than 3,100. “No other game causes my playstation to randomly turn off while playing,” wrote Reddit user TheMadTitanGuantlet. “My [PS4] 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.” In last week’s episode of the Giant Bomb podcast, co-host Brad Shoemaker offered a similar account of Anthem hard-crashing his PS4. Shoemaker said the process powers off the console and results in a system check that takes roughly five minutes to fully restart the hardware. Anthem players have shared similar stories on the game’s official technical support forum. Some affected Anthem players on PS4 have reported successfully getting refunds directly from Sony, while others have said they’ve had no such luck. Update: Electronic Arts said in a tweet on its EA Help Twitter account that it’s “aware of a crashing issue” some players have been reporting and is investigating the issue. The company is asking Anthem players to report details of their crashes in the game’s technical support forum.<doc-sep>One of the most frustrating things for tech fans is when the games or products they pay hard earned money for don't work as promised, and the manufacturer won't even admit there is a problem. This is what has been troubling gamers on the PS4 who purchased EA's Anthem. Anthem has been crashing PS4 consoles leaving the game unplayable and many asking Sony for refunds on the purchase. Sony has allegedly been giving some Anthem players refunds while denying others. While the issue is still not fixed and the problems haven't been addressed, EA has at least stepped up and admitted that there is a problem with Anthem crashing on the PS4. EA Help tweeted that, "We're aware of a crashing issuing" noting that it is asking for gamers to share crash data reports when prompted. We’re aware of a crashing issue some of you have been reporting for #AnthemGame. We’re investigating and ask that you share your crash data reports when prompted. If you have, we’ll be reaching out to gather info; if not, please reply to this thread on AHQ:https://t.co/36P21YFjYL — EA Help (@EAHelp) March 4, 2019 EA Help also noted that it has been reaching out to gamers who have shared those crash reports to gather more info. EA wants gamers who haven't submitted crash data reports, but who have experienced crashes, to reply to a thread on Answers.ea.com here. EA says that it is gathering data on the PS4 issue so that it can find the root cause of the problem and deploy a fix. As of writing the help thread that EA asks for reports on has 602 posts. There is no indication from EA on when a fix for the game issues might land. Anthem has been a mess for EA plagued with bugs at launch and a VIP demo disaster. Anthem was highly anticipated when it was announced at E3 2018 last summer. Game developers have been unable to deliver games that are what many gamers consider to be complete in recent months. It's hard to be happy about spending $60 on a game when they are launching with so many bugs that they can't be enjoyed. The push to launch on time has seemingly outweighed the need to launch a playable product.<doc-sep>BioWare says it has identified the issues in Anthem that were causing players’ PlayStation 4 systems to crash and will issue a patch to fix that problem in an update expected on March 12. In a stream on Twitch today, Anthem lead producer Ben Irving said that BioWare “discovered a bunch of things that were causing crashes, and we’ve addressed them in our patch.” Irving also said that, based on BioWare and Sony’s investigation into the crashes, they haven’t found any consoles were actually “bricked,” or rendered completely unusable, by Anthem crashes. “In all the instances we’re aware of that we’ve investigated in partnership with first-party, they can be powered back up if you know how to just turn the power back on, and cycle it properly,” Irving said. Those findings were echoed by Chad Robertson, head of live service at BioWare, on Twitter. “We’ve identified several causes for the temp power-down crash some PS4 users experienced,” Robertson said. “Fixes for the top issues are in patch next week. If you encounter a game crash where your PS4 console won’t respond, you can manually power down and restart it – no risk of damage. “After thorough review, we have not encountered an instance where Anthem has ‘bricked’ a PS4 console. If you are experiencing anything different, please reach out to @EAHelp so we can track the incident and investigate.” Irving said that BioWare will fix “real soon” a bug related to damage scaling in Anthem which was leading some high-level weapons to be less effective than the game’s basic starting weapon.<doc-sep>
EA and BioWare have had a rough few weeks. Reports were running rampant that the major new IP, Anthem, had severe issues that were causing PS4 game consoles to crash with some claims that these crashes had bricked the console. Earlier this week, a report surfaced that Anthem was also causing crashes on Xbox consoles. The crashes led to many gamers on PS4 consoles asking for refunds from Sony, and word is that Sony granted some of the gamers a refund, but denied others. EA admitted this week that the game was crashing PS4 consoles and asked gamers for help. BioWare's head of live service, Chad Robertson, tweeted that the company had identified several causes for the temporary power-down issue that PS4 gamers are seeing. When the bug struck, the consoles would turn off as if someone had pulled the plug out of the wall. Robertson doesn't get specific on the causes of the issue, but he did say that fixes for the top issues causing the power down crash would be released next week. UPDATE: We’ve identified several causes for the temp power-down crash some PS4 users experienced. Fixes for the top issues are in patch next week. If you encounter a game crash where your PS4 console won’t respond, you can manually power down and restart it – no risk of damage. — Chad Robertson (@crobertson_atx) March 6, 2019 He also noted that if the console wouldn't respond, they can manually power down and restart the console without risking damaging the device. While there was at least one report of Anthem bricking a PS4 console, Robertson notes that after a "thorough review" BioWare hadn't encountered an instance where Anthem bricked a PS4 console.