Anthem, the catalyst for BioWare's decline, is set to pull the plug on its online services on January 12 next year.

BioWare broke the news on the official Anthem website on the 3rd. Once January 12 rolls around, the game will be entirely unplayable. EA justified this by stating, "As Anthem was designed exclusively for online, there is no offline mode available to keep the game running."

Anthem was launched in February 2019 as a sci-fi online shooter. Before it hit the shelves, there was significant anticipation surrounding an online shooter crafted by the RPG veterans at BioWare. However, the final product was met with severe criticism due to numerous issues. The endgame content was threadbare, bugs were rampant, and in some harrowing cases, the console version would force a hard crash that actually damaged players' hardware.

BioWare attempted to address these issues with seasonal updates and the 'Cataclysm' content. During the first year, the developers even halted smaller updates to announce a full-scale redesign of the game. Unfortunately, by February of the following year, those redesign plans were scrapped entirely, and all future updates were put on ice.

With the service termination announcement, in-game currency purchases have been disabled, and the game will be removed from the EA Play subscription catalogue on August 15. BioWare stated that the shutdown will not lead to any staff layoffs.