Anthem players say the game is crashing their PS4s

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.