As a person who repurchased a copy of BioWare’s ill-fated loot shooter Anthem last year, I’m finding myself a little bit jealous of a TikTok user who happened upon the game at a GameStop last week, as they were only going to be charged one penny for the game. Yes, you read that right. A GameStop location sold someone a pre-owned copy of Anthem for $0.01 USD in 2022.
TikTok user @clocklava says in a video, which shows the game’s penny price tag, that the GameStop employee said this kind of mark down comes when a copy of a game has been sitting in stock for awhile and the store is just looking for any means to get it out the door. Considering the amount of price stickers protruding from the case, it seems like this PS4 copy of Anthem has been looking for a home for hot minute. Then, in comes @clocklava, who found the game on the shelf for $0.01, and the GameStop employee apparently just paid the one cent for it, so they got a free game.
Notably, this is not the price you’ll find Anthem running for on GameStop’s website, which has the game listed for $59.99 on PC and $37.99 on Xbox as of this writing. Which uh, seems pretty steep, all things considered, and I bought my copy from Amazon for about $14 last year. Does this apply to the retailer’s price matching policy? Probably not. You can also play Anthem through an EA Play subscription, which is probably simpler than trying to haggle for a penny price point.
@clocklava Shout out to the guy at Gamestop for being an actual G tho. #anthem #ea #apex #apexlegends #gamestop
♬ Duel of the Fates ( Star Wars) – Rob Starr & The Hollywood Singers and Orchestra
For whatever it’s worth, Anthem’s good aspects are worth seeing if you’re getting the game for free. It’s got a lot of structural issues and feels like a waste of a lot of BioWare’s talents, but the combat’s still pretty dope. Plus, I do think it’s an interesting time capsule of a moment in the Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer’s history worth experiencing as a kind of historical document. Because now, that’s all it’s ever going to be. After a rocky launch, a team at BioWare sought to give the game a No Man’s Sky-style revamp, but that was officially canceled last year. That cancelation was what prompted me to rebuy a copy of the game, though it was not quite as cheap as @clocklava found it last week. I did try and give the game a second chance and wanted to experience it again knowing it would never be getting a big update, then I started falling through the floor.
More on BioWare and Anthem:
- Is Anthem Worth Ten Dollars?
- EA Discontinues BioWare Points, Makes DLC Purchasable With Them Free
- Thank You Bioware For Giving My Gay Ass a Heart Icon to Flirt With
At any rate, Anthem may not have panned out the way anyone wanted, but I do hope that its crashing and burning doesn’t mean BioWare has been scared off from working on a new IP. I love Mass Effect, but everything that comes out about this next game is making me lose interest in it, and I’ve pretty much made peace with the fact that Dragon Age is never going to be what I want it to be. So I would like to see a new world from BioWare not behold to live service bullshit.
