Anthem, the failed attempt at a live-service game by Mass Effect and Dragon Age developer BioWare, is now offline for good.
This morning, shortly after 10am Pacific time, Anthem’s remaining players reported seeing the game’s servers blinking out of existence, rendering the game fully unplayable, forever.
BioWare had not given a specific time for when Anthem’s switch-off would occur, and instead only indicated the game would remain online until today, January 12, before its removal. Still, a small cluster of fans had been tracking Anthem’s final hours, and a few dozen had been playing the game on Twitch to see out its final moments.
At around 10.03am Pacific, in-game players reported getting suddenly booted as the plug was pulled. After warnings of a connection problem, players were left sitting back on the Anthem’s startup screen, showing the game’s logo and its characters — now left to forever tinker with their amored Javelin suits, which will never fly again.
“Of all the dead live games, this is one of the most painful, as the game was so very close to greatness,” wrote Anthem fan Marcel Hatam on X/Twitter. “Great core gameplay with fun combat and flying, an intriguing world and great customization. Freelancer signing off 🫡.”
“Damn wanted to get a few more hours before closure, sad,” wrote new fan Regis via BioWare’s Discord, who said they’d only given Anthem a try this month after learning it was shutting down. “Got to play the game for just a week but it already leaves a hole in my chest.”
Anthem launched in February 2019 to lukewarm reviews, including IGN’s own, which criticized the game’s grindiness, lack of polish and mismatched story. The game sold more than 5 million copies but failed to meet EA’s own internal targets, set after a long and troubled development. Despite some effort to further update and improve the game, BioWare ceased active development on Anthem back in February 2021, citing a need to prioritize Dragon Age: The Veilguard (which launched in late 2024 to its own set of mixed feedback) and Mass Effect 5 (which is still seemingly years away).
Anthem publisher EA announced last year that it would stop running the game’s servers today, and confirmed that users would no longer be able play at all after this point. Premium in-game currency was withdrawn from sale last summer, and the game was delisted at the same time from EA Play.
An online-only action RPG spread across a large multiplayer map, Anthem had no offline option — meaning that the game’s world, characters and lore are now officially gone for good. But as IGN reported last week, there are fledgling efforts underway by fans to bring Anthem back online via custom servers, though it is too early to tell exactly how far this option might progress.
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
