‘Anthem’ Is the Latest Video Game Casualty. What Should End-of-Life Care Look Like for Games?

Electronic Arts and BioWare will sunset their online multiplayer game Anthem on January 12, effectively making it obsolete. “Anthem was designed to be an online-only title so once the servers go offline, the game will no longer be playable,” BioWare wrote in the announcement. On August 15, the game will disappear from EA Play’s playlist.

Right now, players can’t buy in-game currency, but they will be able to spend what they have until servers are offline. Developers at BioWare who have been working on Anthem will not be laid off as a result of the game’s end. News of the game’s shutdown comes as the industry, already going through an upheaval, faces increased pressure from players to create “end of life” plans for service games.

Anthem’s development lasted almost seven years, during which the game struggled through major redirections. Its 2019 launch was widely panned by critics, who described it as uneven in its execution, riddled with bugs, and tedious. While BioWare and EA had initially planned to overhaul the game after launch—an undertaking known as Anthem Next—BioWare canceled the project in 2021, citing Covid-19, to shift focus to other games. Its live service continued to run.

Online, fans on places like EA’s official forums are asking for an “offline mode” that would allow them to play Anthem even without the servers. “To shut down and completely remove a game people have put money into (especially without refunds) is a worrying and dangerous precedent,” one player wrote. “If you bought a game you should be able to play it.” Another player wrote that “letting games like Anthem disappear completely also sends a dangerous message: that live-service games are disposable, no matter how much time or money players invested.”

Video games disappear for many reasons, whether it’s licensing issues, code being lost, or physical media becoming unplayable. The developer’s decision to end Anthem’s server support speaks to a problem specifically being combated by Stop Killing Games, a consumer movement out of the European Union that argues this practice is destroying some titles unnecessarily. “An increasing number of video games are sold effectively as goods—with no stated expiration date—but designed to be completely unplayable as soon as support from the publisher ends,” the campaign’s website reads. This practice, the movement’s organizers claim, “is not only detrimental to customers but makes preservation effectively impossible.”

Stop Killing Games won’t be able to do anything to stop the demise of Anthem. The organization relies on petitions and tries to seek government intervention—actions that couldn’t achieve outcomes before January. Still, says founder Ross Scott, the sunsetting is “exactly the sort we're trying to prevent.” The goal is to “break the cycle so this doesn't keep happening for future games.”

For Scott and the other adherents of Stop Killing Games, destroying a video game—much like destroying every copy of a book, album, or film—is tantamount to “a cultural loss for society,” according to the group’s website. “While a less recognized medium, video games still deserve to have basic protections against the complete and willful destruction of many of its works.” What they want is for companies to have backup plans that allow games to live on in a playable format even if they have to be taken offline.

“While Anthem received a lot of negative reviews, it obviously has a lot of production value behind it,” he says, as well as “buyers who want to play the game regardless.” He has never played the game before. Now, he says, he won’t get to.

Easier said than done. Video games are a more dynamic medium than books or film, one that is predicated on both a player’s autonomy in the game and can be supplemented through updates and downloadable content. Online games can be even trickier. SKG, however, argues that past multiplayer online games have survived without company servers through players privately hosting themselves.

Stop Killing Games launched in 2024. Its first big petition is attempting to drum up support from the UK government, which will debate campaigns in Parliament if 100,000 signatures are gathered. The petition has since gained over 1 million signatures, a significant achievement that could tip the odds in SKG’s favor, even if Parliament has yet to respond to the petition.

The group also hoped that if enough people signed, they could persuade the European Commission to introduce consumer protection legislation aimed at preserving games. Last week, in a direct response to the petition, Video Games Europe, which represents the industry in that region, said “the decision to discontinue online services is multi-faceted, never taken lightly, and must be an option for companies when an online experience is no longer commercially viable.” Moving games to private servers, the organization claimed, could leave players’ data vulnerable and not allow games companies to “combat unsafe community content” or remove illegal content.

“In addition,” Video Games Europe’s statement read, “many titles are designed from the ground-up to be online-only; in effect, these proposals would curtail developer choice by making these video games prohibitively expensive to create.”

Video games are more costly than they’ve ever been, both to make and to buy. Players want media they can continue to play for years to come, and live service games are sold on the idea that they’ll continually be updated and supported. Capturing that experience in a bottle will mean reconsidering how far that support goes—and if the video games of today will have the staying power of their predecessors.

“I do commend [Video Games Europe’s] honesty on how they view customers playing old games as an industry problem because they see that as competing with new ones,” Scott says. “We're obviously opposed to those views and feel customers should enjoy whatever it is they paid for.”