"A sad end to a sad story" - fond Anthem farewells begin as BioWare's Destiny-like game reaches last day of operation

Exactly when it'll be switched off remains unclear.

At some point today, EA will turn the Anthem servers off, rendering BioWare's multiplayer online shooter inaccessible and unplayable, presumably forever. And fond farewells have already started to pour in.

Incidentally, the exact end-time is unclear. All we have officially to go by is today's date, 12th January, and as of this morning, the game's servers were still active for me. Presumably that means they'll remain up until the end of the day, until the clock strikes midnight - but midnight in which timezone? My best guess would be Pacific Time, as that's the timezone EA's Redwood City, California headquarters is located in. 12am midnight PT is 8am tomorrow morning GMT.

But I've also seen suggestions the Anthem servers could come down in line with the game's maintenance window, which was apparently 8am Eastern Time or thereabouts, which is 1pm GMT. I'll keep an eye on it and keep trying to clarify with EA.

Perhaps fuelled by this uncertainty, players have already begun saying their goodbyes to the game. The Anthem subreddit right now is filled with them; it makes for quite touching reading, actually. The general format seems to be people sharing a picture or short clip of their Javelin-suited Freelancer character, while sharing a word or two about the game.

• "It has been an honor, freelancers."
• "All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."
• RIP anthem 2026
• My humble Anthem collection. R.I.P. 😢
• Whatever happens to Bastion, after all we have done, we are stronger now, and at our strongest together.

There are lots of variations of the "strongest together" sentiment.

The posts highlight what a startlingly attractive game Anthem can be, particularly as you fly around the often stormy jungle world of Coda, through enormous crumbling ruins and alongside flocks of strange birds. I've been playing Anthem this past week in the hope of seeing a community come together one final time and I've been struck again by the beauty of it. Even the streets of your home base in Tarsis are beautiful to wander around - that crumbled, almost Persian-style architectural fortress.

There has been increased activity in the game, too, as people return for a final fly-around, or as they - as in many cases - finish the game's achievements while they still can. To think that characters they've poured hundreds hours into - and that they're proudly parading around the game's social Launch Bay space - will cease to exist is a sobering reminder of the temporary nature of our virtual, server-based heroes.

Whether anything will happen in Anthem to mark its last moments is also unclear, but I expect it won't, as there appears to be no change anywhere else in the game - the shop still charges for items, and XP and currency is all still awarded in the same way. For all intents and purposes, the game seems untouched. Again, I'll keep an eye out.

Anthem was earmarked for closure in July last year, at which point EA removed the game from digital sale. EA thanked people for their "dedication, passion and support" and confirmed that you won't be able to play Anthem offline. Anthem was originally released in 2019 but failed to catch on in the way EA BioWare hoped. There were plans for a big overhaul - a 2.0 - but they were eventually abandoned, as, it seems, the game was.