Standalone Version Of Elite Dangerous: Arena Removed From Sale

Around a year ago, as an effort to give players that were only interested in Elite Dangerous' PvP module, "CQC," the option of paying for only CQC, instead of paying for the full game, Frontier Developments released a standalone version entitled "Elite Dangerous: Arena."

If you've been watching the game on SteamCharts, you probably already know that the standalone version didn't do so well. As all of the standalone's content was available in the core game and you could play with players that were playing the Arena mode from inside the core game, there really wasn't much of a reason to buy Elite Dangerous: Arena unless you really weren't interested in the core game at all, but wanted to fly around and blow up some other players' spaceships.

Last Friday, in response to Elite Dangerous: Arena doing poorly, Frontier removed the game from sale. The full statement is as follows.

Elite Dangerous: Arena will be removed from sale on Steam, Frontier store, and on the Xbox store. This change is planned for later today.

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. 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 ed as part of the wider Elite Dangerous game. Existing and new players that 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.

Not much change but we just wanted to give you a quick heads up, to avoid any confusion.