Electronic Arts will shutter online services for multiple titles early next year, and that means three games—BioWare’s Anthem, The Sims Mobile and NBA Live 19—are scheduled to become effectively unplayable once their servers go dark.
Anthem, the troubled 2019 looter-shooter from BioWare, is set to be the first to go. Reports place its final day of service on January 12, 2026. Because Anthem was built as an online-only experience, the lights-out will remove access to the whole game rather than just some features. Fans have reacted predictably: some are organizing in-game farewell moments, others are petitioning EA for alternatives, and a small group has started exploratory work on community-run server options in the hopes of keeping the game alive after the official shutdown.
The January timeline — and why the dates vary
The rest of EA’s January shutdown schedule lines up across outlets, though a few publication timelines differ by days. The mobile adaptation The Sims Mobile is slated to close in late January (reports show dates between January 20 and January 24), and NBA Live 19 is scheduled to lose online support around January 30. GameRant has additionally confirmed that Real Racing 3 will continue to run until March 19, 2026 — a reminder that EA’s sunsetting program stretches beyond January.
All three January titles have already been delisted from storefronts, and none offer an offline mode — so once the servers go, play stops. In The Sims Mobile’s case, EA reportedly disabled in‑app purchases months earlier and told players it would unlock premium content in the days before closure so people could experience everything while servers remain active.
Why is EA doing this? There’s no single public explanation. The usual culprits are obvious: server upkeep costs, dwindling player bases and expiring licensing deals (a big factor for sports titles). NBA Live 19, for example, has licensing needs that aren’t free; if the series isn’t profitable, renewing those rights makes little business sense. Analysts and players point out that EA shut down dozens of online services across 2025, part of a wider consolidation inside the company after several years of mixed results on live-service experiments.
Players push back — preservation efforts and farewell events
When an online game disappears, communities scramble. Anthem’s last weeks have already seen two kinds of responses: social organizing for in‑game final flights and technical efforts to preserve the code and recreate server behavior. A grassroots project calling itself Cenotaph (still very early-stage) has asked for technical help to explore legally compliant ways to host custom servers; there are also grassroots farewell events planned for Anthem’s final weekend. Those efforts echo broader conversations about game preservation — hobbyists have recovered functionality for other internet-dependent devices and services before, as in the case where community firmware revived old Nest thermostats after their cloud services were discontinued — a useful parallel to the preservation debate here (/news/revive-old-nest-thermostats).
Developers sometimes leave grace periods, and publishers occasionally unlock content or permit limited refunds; in The Sims Mobile’s shutdown, EA reportedly let players access premium content in the final days so they could “experience everything the game has to offer” before servers close. For players who want to keep a slice of a vanished game, the practical advice is simple: back up screenshots, clips and any personal data you care about now.
What this means for EA’s portfolio and players
The closures underline a shift in how big publishers manage older live-service projects. Anthem’s failure to find a sustainable audience after a rocky launch made it a prime candidate for sunsetting; NBA Live’s disappearance from consoles signals EA stepping back from a series that hasn’t competed well against rivals. And while mobile titles like The Sims Mobile and Real Racing 3 once enjoyed large audiences, delisting and server costs eventually catch up.
For fans, the immediate consequence is emotional: communities dissolve, shared worlds vanish, and memories become all the more precious. For preservationists and archivists, these moments raise thorny legal and technical questions about whether and how multiplayer games can be kept for future play.
If you follow any of these games, now’s the time to log back in, capture what matters, and connect with your community’s final events. For a sense of how a franchise like The Sims continues to evolve even as spin-offs close, read about recent work on the desktop series — changes such as the November patch for The Sims 4 demonstrate the franchise’s ongoing life beyond mobile experiments (/news/sims-4-november-patch-fixes).
EA’s shutdowns are unlikely to stop here; the company wound down dozens of titles through 2025 and has confirmed more schedule changes into 2026. Expect more official notices as EA trims the parts of its catalog that no longer make financial sense to operate.
If you want to follow community preservation or farewell activities, check the major game forums and the projects’ Discords for updates — just remember that unofficial servers and reverse-engineering efforts can raise copyright and legal issues, even when they’re launched with the best intentions.