Activision shuts down Call of Duty Elite subscription service

Newsbrief: It's possible that you forgot the Call of Duty Elite subscription service ever existed. Launched back in 2011 alongside Modern Warfare 3, the $49.99 a year service aimed to give players additional social features, skill tracking and clan management. While the service showed a promising start, interest quickly began to wane, and Activision eventually dropped Elite for Black Ops II in 2012. Today the company said that it is shutting down Elite altogether, noting that future Call of Duty games will have these sorts of features integrated directly into the game. As seen in last year's Call of Duty: Ghosts, Activision took what it learnt from the Elite program and streamlined it, offering to Ghosts players what it says were the most popular features of Elite. Call of Duty Elite will be shut down on February 28, 2014, and no longer be accessible via console or mobile. "There are no plans to bring Call of Duty Elite back," says the official announcement.