The final song for BioWare’s maligned attempt of a looter-shooter Anthem is upon us. Publisher EA announced that servers for the online-only action-RPG will be live until January 12, 2026.
After January 12, the servers will go down. Anthem is designed as an online-only title and require an operating server to work, so the game will be rendered unplayable for everyone once the servers go down.
In addition, new purchases of the game itself and microtransactions have been disabled, though any balance premium currency can still be spent while servers last.
If you’re curious to see how the game holds up more than five years since launch, now’s the time and time’s currently ticking. A physical copy of the game will still work. You can play Anthem via EA Play, the publisher’s subscription service, which is included in higher tiers of Game Pass.
The FAQ part of the news does confirm that no staff at BioWare is impacted by the closure of Anthem servers, no layoffs. But it’s chilling to see this as something they need to disclose, given the games industry at large, worldwide, is still suffering through waves after waves of layoffs. EA included.
There were plans to rework Anthem back in 2021, but was abandoned. The game was then left untouched since. BioWare has since released one new game, Dragon Age The Veilguard, which garnered mixed reception, but our review of it sides with it being a good game, but it performed below EA’s expectations.
This is another disappointing consequence of premium video games designed to only work with an active online connection to a server rendering a game that could be played solo into lost media. Ever since The Crew had been pulled offline, delisted and rendered unplayable after the servers closed down, there has been a movement to ensure purchased video games do not become lost and unplayable in its entirely once they reach end-of-life. The appropriately named Stop Killing Games movement have successfully gained enough support to bring the subject to be the European Commission via the European Citizens’ Initiative with over a million signatures in support of it. While the efforts from the Stop Killing Games movement do not cover retroactively, and there’s definitely going to be a long discussion about what exactly should we expect a video game to function once publisher support is pulled, at least there is a conversation.
Anthem is out now on PS4, PC (EA App) and Xbox One until January 12, 2026.