BioWare To Shut Down 'Anthem' In January 2026
BioWare announced that it will shut down Anthem at the beginning of January 2026.
In a blog post on the game’s website, BioWare announced, “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.”
Additionally, the company suspended any in-game purchases of its in-game premium currency.
In a subsequent Q&A section, BioWare made it crystal clear that the game will no longer be playable in any form after January 12, 2026. It stated, “Anthem was designed to be an online-only title so once the servers go offline, the game will no longer be playable.”
READ: Xbox Scraps Rare's 'Everwild' As Parent Company Microsoft Lays Off 9,000 Employees
The shutting down of Anthem comes less than a year after the company announced it was laying off its entire Dragon Age team and putting its main focus on the next Mass Effect game.
BioWare General Manager Gary McKay shared at the end of January, “In keeping with our fierce commitment to innovating during the development and delivery of Mass Effect, we have challenged ourselves to think deeply about delivering the best experience to our fans. We are taking this opportunity between full development cycles to reimagine how we work at BioWare. Given this stage of development, we don’t require support from the full studio. We have incredible talent here at BioWare, and so we have worked diligently over the past few months to match many of our colleagues with other teams at EA that had open roles that were a strong fit.”
Dragon Age: The Veilguard was a commercial failure with BioWare’s parent company EA revealing that the entire franchise only “engaged approximately 1.5 million players during the quarter, down nearly 50% from the company’s expectations.”
READ: 'Assassin's Creed: Black Flag' Actor Hints At Potential Remake In The Works
Anthem was originally released back in February 2019 for the PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One. The game did not meet EA’s sales goals, which they hoped would be between 5 to 6 million units sold.
EA CEO Andrew Wilson shared in May 2019, “ The launch of Anthem did not meet our expectations.”
The company had previously promised to support the game for at least a decade. EA Vice President Patrick Soderlund said during an appearance at E3, “[Anthem is] a social game where you and your friends go out on quests and journeys. It's a game that we've been working on for almost four years now. And it's a game that - once we launch it next year - will be the start of maybe a 10-year journey for us.”
What do you make of EA and BioWare shutting down Anthem?
NEXT: Head Of Microsoft Gaming Phil Spencer Confirms Multiple Projects Shut Down Amid Massive Layoffs
Holy cow, I had no clue this thing was still going! I thought it got shut down right after launch due to it flopping.
Wait a minute people were still playing Anthem? Bioware was still willing to sink all sorts of money in a live service game that tanked like an unfathomable singularity?