NBA 2K25 has a final buzzer. 2K has confirmed that the September 2024 edition of its basketball series comes off sale on October 30, 2026, and that its online servers shut down on December 31, 2026. The notice now sits at the top of the game's store listings, Steam included. The second date is the one players should care about: when the servers go, MyCAREER and MyTEAM go with them, and MyCAREER is the series' main single-player story mode.
The two dates
The delisting is the smaller change. After October 30 you can no longer buy NBA 2K25, any of its editions or its add-on content on digital storefronts. 2K says anyone who already owns the game can still redownload it and keep playing its offline modes, so a purchase made before the cutoff stays in your library.
The server sunset on December 31 is the bigger one. In its own words, from January 1, 2027 players will "no longer be able to play multiplayer games or access any online game modes." The Steam page states it more bluntly: once the servers close, every function in the game that needs them stops working.
What stops working on January 1
2K's list of what disappears is longer than "online multiplayer":
- MyCAREER, the create-a-player story mode and the career progression attached to it.
- MyTEAM, the card-collecting team builder.
- Virtual Currency (VC). You will no longer be able to earn it, and the modes that run on it go dark.
- Online Leagues, all multiplayer, and community sharing, meaning uploaded rosters, draft classes and other player-made content.
MyCAREER is what makes this shutdown different from a typical sports game going offline. On paper it is a solo mode: you build a player and take them from rookie to legend. But in recent NBA 2K games it has been built around VC. Your player's ratings are upgraded with the same currency the game sells, and the mode lives inside an always-online social hub. With VC turned off, 2K has chosen to switch off the whole mode rather than ship an offline version.
Any VC still sitting in an NBA 2K25 account is effectively worth nothing after December 31. Virtual Currency has never carried over between annual NBA 2K editions, so if you have a balance left, spend it before the year is out.
What you can still play
2K names four modes that survive the shutdown, all of which run locally:
- Play Now, quick exhibition games against the CPU or a friend on the same machine.
- MyNBA, the franchise and general manager mode, including its era-based historical seasons.
- The W, the WNBA career mode.
- MyWNBA, the WNBA franchise mode.
The W stands out on that list. It is the women's counterpart to MyCAREER, but it doesn't run on the VC economy the same way, so it keeps working while the men's career mode doesn't. Anyone who bought NBA 2K25 mainly for franchise play loses very little. Anyone who bought it for MyCAREER or MyTEAM is left with a game that does something else.
Why it is happening now
NBA 2K25 is now two editions old. NBA 2K26 followed in 2025, and NBA 2K27 launched in September 2026, so 2K25's online player base has long since moved on. Annual sports games run on expiring league and player-likeness licences and on server costs that keep running after the audience leaves, so a sunset roughly two years after launch is normal for the genre.
What is less normal is the warning. Sports publishers have often pulled older editions from stores with little or no notice. Here 2K has given about four weeks before the delisting and three months before the servers close, and the notice is on the store page itself, where buyers will see it before they pay.
What to do before December 31
If NBA 2K25 is already in your library, there is nothing you need to do to keep the offline modes; they will remain downloadable and playable. If you have unfinished MyCAREER or MyTEAM business, or VC to spend, you have until the end of the year.
If you are thinking of buying NBA 2K25 now, at full price, don't. Its two biggest modes stop working in under three months, and the current edition, NBA 2K27, is the version 2K will keep supporting. Released in September 2024 for PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch and PC, NBA 2K25 will be playable from December 31 only as a franchise and exhibition game.
