'Anthem' Producer Responds to Claims of Loot Drops Being Stealth Nerfed

Anthem's drop rates for loot appeared to have been nerfed in the day-one patch without the change being mentioned in the notes, but the game's lead producer explained that the change was actually made to fix an unintentional buff.

Following the release of the day-one patch which went live several days ago, players noticed that certain loot drops appeared to be less common than what was seen pre-patch. More player reports began emerging as others agreed that something seemed amiss with the loot drops and accusations began emerging that BioWare had stealthily nerfed loot drop rates in the day-one patch without telling players.

Commenting on several posts within the Anthem subreddit that expressed concerns about the loot drops, Anthem's lead producer Ben Irving explained what occurred to make the drop rates less fulfilling for players. Irving explained that the drop rates had indeed been nerfed, but the nerf was more of a revert after the patch unintentionally increased drop chances for certain loot.

"In our Friday changes, one of the edits we made had the side effect of increasing certain drop chances," Irving said on Reddit. "This was not intended. Once we identified the problem we changed it back to how it was before. That was about 11 hours later."

So it appears there was a stealth change in the patch, though not the one that players originally expected when noticing the lower drop rates. The "buffed" loot drops were just a side effect of the update and have now been reverted which means the drop rates players are experiencing now are part of the intended experience.

"Took a little time for that message to make it around internally and to make sure we understood what happened and how to avoid it going forward," Irving said. "It's never our intent to make changes without being transparent, so we wanted to come in here to respond and clarify."

The lead producer added that BioWare "did intentionally change the drop rates of rare items in certain chests," per the patch notes which were posted.

Anthem is now live on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms, and you can see our full review for the game here.