Why Is NHL Arcade in NHL 25 A Limited Event?

NHL 25 has seen plenty of updates and different modes enter the game, but NHL Arcade might be the most popular mode that’s come to Chel in quite some time. A revamp of the classic game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, NHL Arcade is a 3v3 online mode that allows fans to use players with massive heads and play with virtually no rules.

The mode was released back in November of 2024 and was extremely popular with fans during the short time it was in NHL 25. However, before the year up, NHL Arcade was gone from the game and has not returned at the time of writing. So, why was NHL Arcade a limited-time mode and can fans expect it to come back at any point?

What Is NHL Arcade in NHL 25?

If you were unfortunate enough to miss out on NHL Arcade when the event was live back in November, it’s essentially a mode where anything goes. You take control of a player, either a skater or a goalie, with a huge head and play against another team. There are no stoppages or penalties, and the first to five goals wins. In the rink, players can obtain power-ups that give them whacky and fun powers to use offensively or defensively. Speaking of the rinks, they are much smaller than traditional arenas and feature no boards, so you can be knocked out of the playing area with a solid check.

Every player in NHL 25 is created equal, so all players have the same height and weight. Where you can separate your player is in the power-ups, as those grant huge boosts to your player for a short time. Having a power-up is the best time to score a goal, but if no team manages to make it to five goals in the allotted time, there’s a five-minute sudden death overtime to determine a winner.

It’s a fantastic and highly enjoyable game mode that provides a great break from the monotony of playing the same kind of hockey over and over again.

Why Was NHL Arcade A Limited-Time Mode?

Now let’s get to the major question at hand: why is NHL Arcade not a permanent mode in NHL 25? It’s proven to be one of the more popular modes in the community, as players provided a glowing review of it when it was live and threw a fit when it was removed.

For reference, NHL Arcade was a limited-time event that ran from November to December in 2024. EA was up front about this when the event went live, but players hoped that with the mode being so popular, the developers would decide to keep it in the game permanently.

Unfortunately, there’s no true answer to why NHL Arcade isn’t a permanent mode in NHL 25. Live service games in the modern era have adopted this “fear of missing out (FOMO)” mantra that aims to bring players in with features only to remove them time and time again. Of course, the developers then dangle the features back in front of players in the hopes they’ll stick around to see them added back to the game once more.

With NHL Arcade specifically, the developers might think that it’s too far removed from the traditional hockey that NHL 25 is centered around. That’s mainly why it was originally released as a separate title in 2009, as it was meant to be something entirely different from the mainline NHL series but still feel like a hockey game.

Some players in the community have even called for EA to make NHL Arcade a new free-to-play title alongside the yearly NHL releases. NHL Arcade could be a relief for hardcore fans and a new hockey experience for players who might be new to the sport altogether.

At the time of writing, EA has not mentioned bringing back NHL Arcade in any capacity to NHL 25. The developers may add the mode back in again before the release of NHL 26, but that would likely be for another limited-time event. The developers could also experiment more with the other off-beat modes they’ve added to NHL 25, such as NHL Frenzy. As of right now, though, all future modes in NHL 25 will likely be for a limited time just like NHL Arcade was at the end of 2024.