January 12th, 2026. It’s my next birthday, and also now the date that BioWare exosuit shooter Anthem will finally be taken offline. I very much assume the two things are unrelated.
The live-service thing that EA abandoned doing live-service stuff for not that long after its well-documentedly difficult development was followed by a lukewarm release is finally going the way of the dodo.
“After careful consideration, we will be sunsetting Anthem on January 12, 2026,” EA wrote in a post on their website, “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.”
“We deeply appreciate your dedication, passion and support over the years and we’d like to thank you for that,” the publisher added, also letting us know that this shutdown isn’t resulting in any layoffs. It might seem a strange clarification to make – Anthem hasn’t been a going concern for years and EA have already sliced BioWare’s staff post-Veilguard, but I guess the company have just read the room for once and want to make clear any potential consequences for the developers, rather than sliding around the subject as they have in other announcements.
Once that plug’s pulled, Anthem will cease to be playable since it’s an online-only affair. That means you’ve got roughly 192 days to do as our Alice O did back in 2023 – suddenly remember that Anthem exists and hop in to give it a go like you’re taking one last joyride in an old car that’ll never get the work done to stop it imminently being resigned to the scrapyard.
She wrote the following of that sojourn to the abandoned kingdom of Anthem:
Is Anthem good? No. It’s a looter-shooter with boring loot and perfunctory shoot. But I like parts,” “Flying my cool-looking exosuit around is pleasant, lazily swooping around the skies of an alien world. It’s an involved movement too, because the suit slowly heats up and you need to regularly cool it by diving downwards or flying through waterfalls and such. I’m always happy when simply getting about involves playful little motions. And I’m kind of interested in some of the traditionally BioWare-y NPC chatter and storybits going on back at the hub base? But the rest of the game’s not good enough for me to persist.
Actually, I’ve just checked and assuming you don’t already own it, you’ll need to pay for an EA Play subscription to try Anthem on PC before its song is sung. The game’s also set to be removed from that service in 43 days’ time, as of writing, so your window’s suddenly gotten a lot smaller.
