EA Sports Arena Closing Up Shop

[RaychelSnr]

With less than .2% of gamers taking advantage of the EA Sports Arena feature, EA announced today it is closing up shop on the service in November. No games releasing this year will feature the service and all prior games still using the feature will see it disabled in November.

The Arena allowed gamers to play for real cash against gamers in select EA Sports games. The feature, ran by World Gaming a Virgin Media Company, was never well received and definitely raises questions about that services future.

Did you use the Arena? Will you miss it?

[OSGuy321]

Never even heard of this before. I get most of my gaming info nowadays from Steam/Valve website.

[jyoung]

The fact that Virgin Gaming (now called World Gaming) was ruled illegal in 14 U.S. states and strictly limited to players who were 18 and older likely hurt its rate of use.

I also don't think I ever saw a single mention from EA Sports about this feature anywhere outside of the actual in-game menus, where it was usually hidden several menus deep.

Somehow, Virgin was able to circumvent the fact that this service was basically online gambling, just because it involved "games of skill," not "games of chance."

[GlennN]

Never even heard of it. No matter - I only play offline, so I am far from that target market!

[dal_hawk]

Not legal in all states. So that goes for some of the issues too.

[dal_hawk]

Quote: Originally Posted by dal_hawk

Not legal in all states. So that goes for some of the issues too.

Even if your 21 it was illegal in Iowa at least.

[Syce]

couple guys from my NHL league got into it to try and fund them selves a ps4. but they said there were too many cheesers using it.

[snc237]

I tried to play a few games in it but it was overly complicated just to play a game.