EA Killing Off Anthem
EA has revealed that it plans to sunset Anthem, its online multiplayer action title released in February 2019, across all major platforms. It will first disappear from EA Play on August 15, 2025, before servers are completely shut down in January 2026.
Anthem presents a world ravaged by a godly force called The Anthem. Corrupt and monstrous beings roam the planet, while others try to harness what’s left of The Anthem for their own purposes. Players step into the role of a Freelancer, and use a powerful Javelin exosuit to fight and explore the world.
“After careful consideration, we will be sunsetting Anthem on January 12, 2026,” EA announced on the official Anthem site. “This means that the game will still be playable online for the next 180+ days. As of today (July 3), you can no longer purchase in-game premium currency, but you can still use your remaining balance until the servers go offline.”
Another One Bites The Dust
This news comes at a pivotal point regarding the conversation around games preservation. The Stop Killing Games initiative is currently running, and the situation regarding Anthem is exactly what it’s about: holding video game companies accountable for end of life support, of which EA/Bioware has none for Anthem.
Although official player numbers for Anthem aren’t provided by EA or Bioware, specialist sites such as MMO Populations estimates the game to have around 14,674 players a month. Twitch also hosts an official Anthem channel; even though this has 298,000 subscribers, the majority of recent videos average only 100 viewers, with some dipping into single digits.
It could be fair to say that the writing’s been on the wall for Anthem for a few years now; the last patch was released in February 2020 and developers Bioware announced in 2021 that there would be no further work done on the game. But, this doesn’t change the fact that from the start of next year it will completely cease to exist as an actual game.
An Anthem No One Will Remember
Although it has a single player mode, Anthem was designed to be a multiplayer title and requires an internet connection to play, which EA addresses in the FAQs accompanying the shutdown news:
“Anthem was designed to be an online-only title so once the servers go offline, the game will no longer be playable.”
While other online-only games have been revived on private servers, such as City of Heroes, it’s not a given that a publisher/studio will agree to this. It could also be argued that the low player base means there is no need to bother trying to preserve Anthem, but this does miss the point.
Games aren’t really preserved because loads of people play them, but because they’re cultural artifacts; if only a few thousand people viewed the Mona Lisa each month, for example, would this justify incinerating it to make space for a new painting and the save on restoration/preservation costs? Not a direct analogy, of course, but the underlying principle is the same.
If there’s any good news related to this, it’s that the shutdown hasn’t resulted in any layoffs, although chances are Anthem is overseen by a skeleton crew anyway, given the lack of new content and updates for four years.
