Good morning!

Hope you’ve got your coffee, because the gaming industry is out here making headlines like it’s trying to win a Darwin Award. EA just pulled the plug on Anthem (yes, that Anthem), and the “Stop Killing Games” petition hit a million signatures on the same day. You can’t make this stuff up.

In this edition, we’ve got:

• EA nukes Anthem from orbit

• Ubisoft wants you to burn your games

• Dishonored dev dunks on Game Pass

Here’s everything you need to know this week in the wild world of gaming, because if the industry’s going to set itself on fire, the least I can do is hand you the marshmallows.

Here’s everything you need to know this week in the world of gaming.

TOP STORY

🎮 Anthem is Dead (Again) – And EA Still Hasn't Read the Room

Remember Anthem? That glossy, Iron Man-meets-dystopia looter-shooter from BioWare? Yeah, well… it's officially getting Thanos-snapped out of existence. EA just announced that Anthem’s servers will shut down permanently in January 2026, and when they go, the game goes with them. No offline mode. No menu access. No funeral. Just delete.exe.

The timing? Poetic. This announcement dropped the same day the “Stop Killing Games” petition hit 1 million signatures. Chef’s kiss.

Here’s the kicker: you paid for Anthem? Tough luck. You’re not losing a bad game, you’re losing the right to access something you bought. Because buying a digital game today just means you’re renting it until the publisher gets bored or broke.

Anthem was BioWare’s big swing into the live-service void back in 2019, and it struck out hard. Three hours of shallow content, buggy messes, and writing that made Mass Effect: Andromeda look like Shakespeare. BioWare’s since been gutted, Veilguard flopped, and now there’s a handful of devs limping toward another Mass Effect title. Godspeed.

This whole debacle is why the Stop Killing Games movement exists in the first place. It’s about game preservation, sure, but also basic consumer respect. EA, however, is taking the “sunsetting” approach to mean setting fire to the sun and calling it a feature.

We get it. Live-service games are hard. But deleting a game from existence? That’s madness. Want change? Push for offline modes, private servers, or literally anything that doesn’t involve memory-holing years of dev time.

So yeah, Anthem is finally dying. Not with a bang, not even a whimper. Just a server shutdown notice, a sarcastic shrug from EA, and one last meme: “Thank you for your support.”

No, EA. Thank you for the reminder: don’t trust a digital-only future. 

LATEST NEWS

GENERAL

• Dishonored and Prey studio founder thinks Xbox Game Pass "is an unsustainable model" that's been "damaging the industry for a decade"

• Ubisoft Wants Gamers To Destroy All Copies of A Game Once It Goes Offline

QUICK LINKS

• EA Japan President Calls Out Microsoft for Chasing Short-Term Results Amid Mass Layoffs

• European game publisher group responds to Stop Killing Games, claims the proposal 'would curtail developer choice'

• Larian's Head Of Publishing Says That Not All Games Need To Be Free, They Just Need To Be Good

• Valve only blocked a creepy fascist Mount and Blade: Warband mod in South Korea, not worldwide, and the mod's own author took it down entirely

• Bethesda is working on multiple Fallout projects

• “Definitely Not”: Helldivers 2 Devs Confirm It Won’t Ever Come To Xbox Game Pass

• Romero Games now ‘completely closed’ following Microsoft cuts, it’s claimed