Frontier pulls Elite Dangerous: Arena from sale

Frontier Developments has officially killed off Elite Dangerous: Arena as a standalone product, pulling the game from sale, but claims it has no plans to remove Arena functionality from the main game nor to prevent current Arena owners from playing.

Designed for those who prefer combat to any other form of progression in games, Elite Dangerous: Arena launched as a lower-cost way for gamers to get involved in the world of Elite Dangerous via close-quarters combat (CQC). Take-up, however, has apparently been poor: While the Arena sub-section of the main game has proven popular, very few players have opted to pick up Arena as a standalone game, and Frontier has thus taken the decision to pull it from sale.

'We’ve been looking at our metrics which suggest that the vast majority of new and regular Arena players tend to play Arena through the main Elite Dangerous client rather than the standalone Arena one,' the company claimed in a statement on the removal. 'We’ve made the decision to remove the standalone version of Elite Dangerous: Arena in order to reduce the number of builds that have to be maintained and managed across Steam, Xbox One and in 2Q'17 PlayStation Network, as well as clarifying the choices for new players of Elite Dangerous on these storefronts.

'Elite Dangerous: Arena continues to be available and supported as part of the wider Elite Dangerous game. Existing and new players that join the Elite Dangerous galaxy will continue to be able to enjoy the fast-paced action of Arena through the main menu. Existing Elite Dangerous: Arena client owners will still be able to enjoy Arena as they have always done.'

In responses to the removal on the Frontier forum, players have been suggesting that there are deeper problems with Arena than the unpopularity of its standalone client, claiming that the gameplay is repetitive, lacking in maps and game modes, and suffers from empty lobbies and long queuing times due to a lack of players and no support for bots.