NBA 2K25 Gets Delisted October 30 and Its MyCareer and MyTeam Modes Die With the Servers on January 1

By CriticalPixel · 2026-10-05

2K Sports is pulling the plug on NBA 2K25, and it is taking the single-player career with it. The game comes off sale on October 30, 2026, gets formally discontinued on December 31, and from January 1, 2027 MyCareer and MyTeam stop working entirely, according to 2K's own server sunset page. That is roughly two years of life for a game that launched in September 2024 across PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Switch. If you sank hundreds of hours into building a player, he now has a retirement date, and you did not pick it. Offline modes survive, but MyCareer, a mode people pour serious time into, does not.

Official NBA 2K25 gameplay screenshot from the Steam store page showing a basketball match in progress

What 2K is actually shutting down

The dates are simple. NBA 2K25 is removed from sale on October 30, 2026 and fully discontinued on December 31, 2026. From January 1, 2027 there is no multiplayer, no online modes of any kind, and no way to earn Virtual Currency. MyCAREER and MyTEAM become unavailable, while Play Now, MyNBA, The W and MyWNBA stay playable, with anything that needs a 2K server gone, including Online Leagues and community sharing. People who already own the game can still redownload it and play those offline modes. One wrinkle worth knowing: the support page was first published on September 3 and updated on October 2, so the notice has been sitting there for a while, and outlets like GameSpot only picked it up on October 5.

The reason a single-player mode dies at all comes down to how MyCareer is built. Pixel Byte reasons that it is most likely tied to The City, the hub world that connects the online features with MyCareer, where your created player gets dropped into a space shared with other people. When the servers go, the hub goes, and every mode hanging off it goes with it. That is Pixel Byte's read rather than something 2K has spelled out, but it fits what the support page says about anything requiring a 2K connection. It also makes the design choice look worse: a career mode you play alone was wired to a social lobby, and now the lobby decides when your save stops existing.

This is a schedule, not an accident

None of this is a surprise if you follow the series. GameSpot notes that NBA 2K24 was discontinued on January 31, 2026, with NBA 2K23 going dark a year before that, and describes a set pattern of keeping servers up for about two years. NBA 2K Playgrounds 2 met the same fate, per Pixel Byte. The newest entry, NBA 2K27, launched in September 2026, so if the pattern holds GameSpot expects it to be delisted in October 2028 and shut down in January 2029. GameSpot also floats licensing and legal requirements as a possible factor, given how many real players and brands appear in the games, which is plausible but unconfirmed.

Official NBA 2K25 screenshot from the Steam store page showing a player on the court

Compare that with GTA Online, which comes from 2K's parent company Take-Two through Rockstar and has been online since 2013. GameSpot points out that it reportedly earns many millions of dollars every month, which is why Rockstar keeps supporting it. NBA 2K is a different business with yearly releases, so the old game gets shelved when the new one needs the attention. That logic holds for multiplayer, where the population moves on. It holds much less for a career mode that one person plays alone, and that is where the anger is landing.

How players are reacting

Reaction on X is thin so far, so treat this as a sample rather than a consensus. ViralBaseHub called delisting a modern sports game and shutting down its single-player modes after two years "generational villainy." RealRobinator put the career-mode complaint in one line: spent all that time building a player just for 2K to decide when he retires. A third post from not_pro_gamer simply listed the dates and tagged it #GamePreservation, which tells you which argument this feeds into. GameSpot's own summary is that people are particularly upset about being able to play a mode like MyCareer for only two years, because they invest significant time into their teams.

The CriticalPixel take

Servers cost money, licenses expire, and 2K has told people the dates in plain language, which is more than some publishers manage. The company is also keeping Play Now, MyNBA, The W and MyWNBA alive offline, so the game does not turn into a brick on the day the servers close. Fair enough. But a two-year clock on a sports game is a short leash, and tying a solo career to online infrastructure is the part that stings. If a mode can be played alone, it should be able to run alone, and a save file should not come with an expiry date set by someone else.

The practical advice is simple: if you own NBA 2K25, keep it installed and know that the offline modes will outlive the servers. If you are deciding whether to commit to NBA 2K27 and its career mode, remember the pattern GameSpot laid out, because it points to the same calendar again in a couple of years. Players have been burned by always-online design before, and every one of these shutdowns adds another data point for the preservation crowd. The studio gets to move on to the next season, and the people who built a career player are the ones left holding a save file that cannot load.