Elite: Dangerous PvP Spinoff Pulled From Sale

Elite: Dangerous's standalone PvP spinoff, Arena, has been pulled from sale by publisher Frontier Developments.

In a forum post, senior community manager Edward Lewis confirmed the game has been removed from Frontier's own store, as well as from Steam and the Xbox One Store. The game, which is identical to the full game's dogfighting mode, was never made available on PlayStation 4.

Lewis went on to explain the reason behind the removal. "Our metrics ... 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 the future, PlayStation Network], as well as clarifying the choices for new players of Elite Dangerous on these storefronts."

The community manager reassured players that those who have already downloaded the client will still be able to play it, and the mode will continue to be accessible through the main menu of the full Elite: Dangerous game.

Elite: Dangerous's dogfighting mode Arena was released as its own game in early 2016. The main game, meanwhile, released on PC in 2014, before coming to Xbox One a year later. It is also coming to PS4 later this year.

In our review, we called Elite: Dangerous "an intimidating beast" that "demands feasts of patience," but we found its scale and sense of discovery exciting. For more, check out our Elite: Dangerous review.