EA has finally announced plans to end services for their MMO Anthem.
They made this announcement on an update page on the game’s official website:
We have an important update to share regarding Anthem. After careful consideration, we will be sunsetting Anthem on January 12, 2026. This means that the game will still be playable online for the next 180+ days. As of today, you can no longer purchase in-game premium currency, but you can still use your remaining balance until the servers go offline.
They then went on to confirm that Anthem would be removed from EA Play on August 15, 2025, and that this decision did not lead to any layoffs at Bioware. Unfortunately, there have been layoffs at the studio for different reasons. Namely, EA announced layoffs this January after the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.
But Anthem is a genuinely fascinating story. The game launched in February 2019 and did sell over 5 million units overall. However, it didn’t reach expectations relative to budget and other factors, and so the game became mostly abandoned. A year after launch, EA announced plans to reboot Anthem, but they never followed through on these plans and cancelled the reboot the year after that.
One can say that there’s so many things about Anthem that could have clearly been done better in hindsight. For example, now that we know that CD Projekt RED managed to redeem their reputation with a comeback narrative for Cyberpunk 2077, EA and Bioware could have done the same if they committed to it. We also now know that that the ostensible inspiration for Anthem, the Destiny franchise, would ultimately come undone after failing to live up to expectations from fans.
But there are so many odder things about Anthem that certainly serves as food for thought. Why did EA just let the servers keep going as long as they did? One could argue that they ran the clock on what was legally mandated minimum period of support, but the question will always come up on why EA didn’t follow through on their plans to reboot.
Anthem also occupies an odd slot in the history of live service. It was just a little bit late to when Fortnite Battle Royale and Overwatch first hit the landscape. But as EA themselves demonstrated with Apex Legends, it was still possible to stake your place in the market if you had the right idea. The strangest thing of all is that Concord was in development this whole time that Anthem released, and sat unused, most unplayed as Bioware fans were ultimately uninterested.
In principle, Anthem would be the ideal subject of the Stop Killing Games movement, but it doesn’t help that it isn’t a particularly popular game. Having said that, if Anthem players want for a way to keep playing the single player campaign after its pending delisting, they need to lend their support to the movement.
