Anthem Alpha Streamer Breaks NDA, Allegedly Has EA Origin Games Library Nuked

Game developers and publishers aren't letting gamers get away with breaking NDAs surrounding the alpha and beta tests of games ahead of launch. Bethesda and Microsoft tag teamed a Fallout 76 NDA breaker back in October ahead of the game's launch after the beta participant recorded and posted a 90-second clip of himself playing the game. Something similar has allegedly happened to a participant in the alpha test of the anticipated EA and BioWare game Anthem.

In this case a participant in the alpha for Anthem was live streaming his gameplay on Twitch, which is a violation of the NDA. Someone made a video of the Twitch streaming incident, and in the video, you can see the streamer start the game and shortly after the Origin app crashes. The streamer closes Origin via Task Manager and then relaunches it. When Origin opens back up the streamer finds not only is Anthem gone, but his entire Origin catalog of games is gone as well. EA made swift work of the NDA breaker; it's not clear how it was able to identify and brick the user's Origin app so quickly. It is also unclear if this is a temporary ban or if the games are gone for good.   

Before the Twitch streaming incident, BioWare's Mark Darrah had taken to Twitter to mention that the Alpha was underway and that chatter about server connectivity issues had been noticed. He noted that the alpha was specifically to ferret out connectivity issues and that if participants were talking about game issues they were in violation of their NDA. With all the people who sign up for alpha and beta tests these days trying to get Twitch or Twitter famous, it's hard for game publishers and developers to get a game to market without significant leaks.

Anthem was initially supposed to have launched this fall, but the game is now set to launch on February 22, 2019.