The final shutdown of BioWare’s flopped action role-playing game Anthem is imminent. From January 12, you will no longer be able to play the game due to the lack of an offline mode.
It’s the final chapter in a sad story that is now coming to an irrevocable end: As reported by the English-language portal PCGamer reports that the servers for BioWare’s former action hopeful Anthem will be shut down next Monday, January 12, 2026.
This marks the end of the game’s ambitious live service plan just under seven years after its release – and it takes Anthem with it. This is because Anthem has no offline mode.
Once the servers are shut down on January 12, the title will be unplayable. Your disc copies and library entries on Origin will then be effectively worthless. There will be no way to continue playing locally or privately. The world of Bastion will be wiped out.
So if you own Anthem and want to climb back into your Javelin, you have exactly one week left!
Crash with announcement
The case of Anthem is considered by many to be the absolute low point in the history of BioWare, once the king of role-playing games. When the game was released in 2019, expectations were sky-high. It was supposed to be the answer to Destiny: a graphically opulent co-op shooter in which you fly through the air like Iron Man.
But the reality at launch was sobering. Critics – including us in the GlobalESportNews test – praised the grandiose flying experience and the pretty graphics. But in terms of gameplay, Anthem was deeply flawed
, as international reviews at the time stated.
The story seemed fragmented, the loot system ill-conceived, and technical problems robbed players of their enjoyment.
the game’s Metascore is still only 59 percent; players even punish it with a 4.1.
Why Anthem failed
The failure was not only due to bugs, but also to an identity crisis: BioWare, actually famous for profound single-player role-playing games such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age, was chasing a trend here. Publisher EA wanted to tap into the broad mass of loot shooter fans with the studio’s next project and forced the developers to stray far from their own DNA with Anthem.
The result was a hybrid that didn’t make anyone happy: The story was trivial, the scope far too small, and old fans of the studio missed the BioWare magic they had come to expect.
Although the developers promised improvements shortly after launch and planned an extensive overhaul with Anthem Next
, EA pulled the plug in 2021 in favor of other brands. Since then, the game has been living on borrowed time.
Anthem will finally disappear on January 12. The game will probably go down in video game history as a reminder of what happens when the balancing act between traditional studio strengths and the pressure to incorporate live service elements becomes too great. So fire up your engines one last time if you want – in a few days, it will all be over.
