When do the Anthem servers shut down for good?

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Pour one out for BioWare's fascinating misfire

Anthem - four players hovering high in the air

Anthem players have just two weeks left from today to play BioWare's sci-fi action RPG. The servers will be shut off on Jan. 12, 2026, and after that Anthem will no longer be playable.

It was developed and released during a time when always-online games — even when they didn't require you play multiplayer — was quite a fad. As such, when games like Anthem and Ubisoft's The Crew have their servers shut down, it's adios for the game; they're rendered unplayable. Offline modes for games like these is something game preservationists, like the Stop Killing Games movement, have been fighting for.

If Anthem's impending death is making you morbidly curious to try its action out, which finds players piloting Iron Man-like mech suits, you'll have to have already purchased the game to give it a go. When EA announced in July it was sunsetting Anthem's servers, it also removed the game from digital storefronts, meaning you can't easily buy it no matter how much you want to. Your best bet at this point would be to check out your local game stores and see if they have disc copies lying around for pennies on the dollar.

The loot shooter was a step away from what developer BioWare was typically known for — single-player, character-focused RPGs — and, in retrospect, was a major misstep. Anthem launched to a rather mixed reception, with Polygon's review at the time remarking that its collision of ideas didn't work. After a rough launch, BioWare set out to work on a major redesign of the game, Anthem Next, but that was canceled in 2021.

In the years since, BioWare has released Mass Effect Legendary Edition (a remaster of the original Mass Effect trilogy) and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, which didn't end up selling up to EA's expectations. Next in the pipeline for the studio is the next Mass Effect entry, which is currently without a release window or any official plot details.

So, if you still have Anthem sitting in your library from a sale long ago, now is the time to finally install it and see what Anthem is all about, at your own risk.

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