Recent comments from developers have revealed some key details that prove why ARC Raiders is still performing well in 2026. As a PvPvE extraction shooter, dying in a match before extracting means losing out on any items the player has on them. With the expectation that players can lose their gear at any time, deciding what to take along when queuing for a match requires a good deal of thought. The choice to incorporate PvP and redirect ARC Raiders to be an extraction shooter allowed the team to keep the world, lore, and large-scale fights against giant machines that they had built for the original pitch. However, it also injected the game with a layer of unpredictability that proved to be the missing key that unlocked the addictive gameplay loop that ARC Raiders players have come to enjoy.
Black Ops 7 vs. Black Ops 6 – How are the maps?
Under a year later, its direct sequel opened at around a third of that, despite similar distribution across Steam, Battle.net, and PC Game Pass. It was thought that the 1.0 launch of Escape from Tarkov might halt ARC Raiders where it stands, but even that wasn’t enough to pull hundreds of thousands of players out of Embark’s all-new extraction shooter. It was the most searched video game of the year according to Google, and was one of Steam’s best-selling games by revenue in 2025. Not only has it hit yet another sales milestone, but it also set a new record for its daily active users, with over 3.2 million players tuning in yesterday, January 4, to spend their final hours of the winter/holiday break playing some ARC Raiders. Streamers, long-time players, and high-profile contributors openly voice frustration over how rampant these exploits have become. Frequent disruptions from cheaters affect not just individual sessions, but the emotional payoff of playing.
What other unwritten rules do you have to share with ARC Raiders players?
Whether you treat the game as an exciting case study in new tools or as a warning shot about where those tools can lead, it’s hard to pretend its use of AI is incidental. In a shooter about surviving a world run by machines, the machines are already in the booth. Its reinforcement learning for robotic enemies is a clear technical win that makes fights feel more dynamic. CEO Junghun Lee has said players should assume that “every game company is now using AI,” and framed the key question as how studios will differentiate when everyone has access to roughly the same tools.
Does Arc Raiders Have a Skill Gap Issue?
Embark has mentioned efforts to crack down on all the cheating are ongoing, but they need to get a handle on all these problems fast, or they could cause irrepairable damage to the game long term. This is the biggest problem with the game, according to the hivemind of the Arc Raiders’ subreddit right now, with a number of posts getting lots of attention. The simplest solution is to make it a schedule that rotates for an odd number of hours. Once you know where the Arc enemies are going to be, it’s far easier to avoid them. It’d undoubtedly make the game more unforgiving if these spawns were more random, but there should be an element of it.
Elden Ring Nightreign Raider Guide
- Often, other players are likely to be friendly to players who chat or use the “Don’t Shoot” voice line, since no one wants to lose their loot.
- It’s important to become self-sufficient as soon as possible, so concentrate on upgrading your workstations (where you craft new items).
- Here you can perform various different actions and build your own personal home below.
- By separating players based on what content they prefer to participate in, many are solely exposed to their avenue of “fun.”
- This new playstyle matchmaking may also help players who constantly have to play with random teammates, perhaps giving them better allies during matches.
- This particular cheating is most often pinpointed on the Stella Montis map, with many players reporting this as an ongoing issue.
The fact our Arc Raiders interactive maps show exactly where to find each type of Arc foe on every map shouldn’t be possible, because dynamic spawns would result in more unpredictable gameplay. And even though some players have already completed most or all of these things, ARC Raiders still has more to come that is just around the corner. On forums and social platforms, the most common complaints narrow in on the NPC delivery.
Subscribe to the newsletter for deeper ARC Raiders coverage
- If the reported strain on the game’s servers is any indication, ARC Raiders is destined to be one of the year’s biggest shooters, buoyed by the continued popularity of the extraction shooter subgenre.
- In regards to the pure PvE gameplay of this original version, ARC Raiders Creative Director Stefan Strandberg bluntly states that “it didn’t work. The larger recipe for the game wasn’t there.”
- A randomized loadout gives you the chance to experiment with many of ARC Raiders’ weapons, all without needing to worry about losing any gear that you’ve previously acquired.
- This milestone puts into context just how popular Arc Raiders is, and how quickly it’s managed to rise up to sit comfortably with some of the biggest releases in the last few years, let alone 2025, which was a pretty strong year for shooters.
- I’ve been loving my time in Arc Raiders, as I mentioned in my Arc Raiders review, but it’s also managed to hook the rest of the PC Gamer team, with our guides writer Rory Norris proclaiming it as an “extraction shooter for people with jobs”.
- This is a brilliant option for when you’re exploring a new map for the first time, or if you just need to recoup your supplies after being killed on a previous run.
Self-preservation seems to outweigh other functions when it comes to human nature. On top of that, the game has been heavily criticized for its reliance on AI‑generated art in cosmetic elements and for leaning into a “live service plus annual box release” model that resets purchases and progression from previous entries. For a significant slice of the audience, paying a premium price tag for a campaign that feels constrained by online systems and a multiplayer suite packed with microtransactions is a step too far. The community completed that unlock in roughly a day, which meant that during Black Ops 7’s debut weekend, ARC Raiders players had an entirely fresh map to explore. That kind of synchronized content beat is a textbook way to hold attention when a giant competitor shows up. After a monumental first few months, 2026 is shaping up to be a big year for ARC Raiders.
ARC Raiders is Still Dominating on Steam and It’s Showing Absolutely No Signs of Slowing Down
Despite the controversies around SBMM in those titles, the combination of other tools might make it work in this game. ARC Raiders, the exhilarating extraction shooter from Embark Studios, is still going from strength to strength. Today, the title hit a new all-time high player count on Steam, pushing ever higher and continuing to hold a solid bar for the genre. As time goes on, ARC Raiders is only getting stronger, even with the arrival of Black Ops 7 and Escape from Tarkov. This immediately becomes a problem for players who can only play at set times, such as those with full-time jobs, school, or any other number of life commitments. When the rarer events roll around, such as Hidden Bunker and Locked Gate, some players haven’t ever had the opportunity to play them.
ARC Raiders Reminds Me What It Feels Like to Survive, Not Dominate
Other users complained that Arc Raiders’ exploits are the reason the game is getting too difficult. The topic of Arc Raiders having a skill gap issue first kicked off after a video by Twitch streamer TimTheTatman went viral online. In the clip, the streamer claimed that Arc Raiders was starting to have a skill gap situation similar to Fortnite. For context, the Epic Games battle royale had a situation early on where some players became so good at building that they started to dominate other users.
Marvel Rivals conspiracy theories are hitting a breaking point
On the one side, you have PVP players who want to treat the game like a competitive shooter. Another common criticism I saw was casual players complaining about certain users spending all day playing the game. “It’s hard to not get good at a game when you have 12 hours a day to play.” The complaint is that most players have jobs and school, so they only have a few hours a day to jump into the shooter.
ARC Raiders: How To Play With Friends
Enemy behavior, NPC voices, and player comms all lean on AI in Arc Raiders, but not in the same way — or to the same reception. Adding another layer to all of this is that Arc Raiders is currently developing “gangs” within the game itself. Players are joining clans and essentially kicking off an in-game war against anyone not in their group. For average players who are just trying to jump into a casual session, you can kind of see why this would quickly become problematic. To celebrate the Server Slam we have added an additional pre-order reward, The Bruiser Bundle, for all players who purchase any edition of ARC Raiders ahead of launch.
First Masters of the Universe Footage Revealed in New Teaser (And It’s Already Perfect)
These days, many live-service titles like Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Fortnite will use some form of skill-based matchmaking as the main system to pair players with each other when searching for a multiplayer match. The finer details will, of course, vary from game to game, but ARC Raiders’ matchmaking is a little more complicated. Shortly after the game launched, fans began theorizing that the shooter used either an aggression-based system or one that took into consideration the level of a gear a player was taking Topside. After weeks of speculation, Embark’s CEO finally revealed that ARC Raiders uses an aggression-based matchmaking system.
Why Steam doesn’t tell the whole Call of Duty story
By numbers, ARC Raiders is the most popular and successful extraction shooter ever made, and it’s dominating the genre. It hasn’t even dropped below 250K concurrent players since launch, according to SteamDB. Its staying power has been impressive, to say the least, and it wouldn’t be surprising at all if the defining game of 2026 was this third-person extraction shooter from October 2025. You could say “no two matches are alike” about plenty of online multiplayer games, and it’s a statement that is certainly true for Arc Raiders.
Arc Raiders and AI: What the game actually uses, and why it’s controversial
- The fundamental gameplay loop of ARC Raiders is to battle ARC enemies and scavenge for loot, with the ever-present threat of encountering another hostile player keeping the moment-to-moment gameplay tense.
- You play as a raider making daring trips topside to scavenge ruined towns and facilities.
- ARC Raiders’ physics-driven feedback, tangible atmosphere, iconic audio design, solo matchmaking, and accessibility uncommon for the genre have all contributed to its long-term popularity.
If you shoot people, you’re more likely to be put on servers where people shoot back. You’ll learn faster and I’ve often been given items by players who I’ve helped out. This idea of matchmaking based on preference is excellent for player experiences, especially for anyone who doesn’t want to be exposed to certain aspects of ARC Raiders. In other survival shooters, it can be easy for someone who only likes doing PvE content to run into overly aggressive players who force them into unwanted PvP. By separating players based on what content they prefer to participate in, many are solely exposed to their avenue of “fun.” Under the same platform split as last year—Steam, Battle.net, and Game Pass—Black Ops 6 hit roughly three times the Steam concurrence that Black Ops 7 is seeing at launch.
Mario Kart World Update 1.5.0 Adds Team Races to Knockout Tour
Players describe “weird intonations,” lines that sound as though they’re being read exactly as written with no sense of conversational rhythm, and a general flatness that stands out next to the live banter of human teammates. The ARC machines that stomp around the battlefield aren’t running on classic hand-authored animation trees alone. Embark uses reinforcement learning for locomotion and certain reactive behaviors, especially on the larger, multi-legged drones.
- For people who avoid in-game voice chat because of anxiety, accent bias, or harassment, being able to “speak” as a Raider voice while still using natural speech rhythm feels like a meaningful accessibility and safety gain.
- According to a recent GameRant article, an interview with Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderlund has given more context surrounding ARC Raiders matchmaking.
- After a monumental first few months, 2026 is shaping up to be a big year for ARC Raiders.
- Every fight and non-violent interaction with another player is unique and sticks in the memory, giving you a biography’s worth of war stories for each map that you can look back on as fond memories.
- The fact that a brand‑new IP can seriously challenge Call of Duty’s mindshare on PC, in the same weeks as launch, is a meaningful shift.
- Even skilled players often find themselves eliminated before they can react, turning tense firefights into exercises in frustration rather than skill.
- I’m sure that, after some considerable time with ARC Raiders, fortunes will shift and allow me to be a bit more brazen with my approach to engaging with combatants, but for now, it’s a reminder that sometimes, simply surviving is enough.
- The topic of Arc Raiders having a skill gap issue first kicked off after a video by Twitch streamer TimTheTatman went viral online.
- This makes firefights feel completely unfair, turning skill-based encounters into exercises in frustration for honest players.
- Needless to say, players should have plenty of fresh reasons to jump back in soon.
That means you have to fill your pockets and escape before time’s up, otherwise you die in a massive explosion that rocks the map when the countdown ticks down to zero. Unless you have a raider hatch key for a sneaky escape, you have to call for an elevator to take you down to Speranza, and these close off as the match draws to an end, meaning there’s only one escape option if you leave it to the last minute. What makes the game special is how all of these things come together with the rest of the game’s thoughtful systems such arc wallhack as stamina management, inventory weight, climbing mechanics, level design and gadgets. The toolkit is deep and the sandbox is wide, so no two encounters ever play out the same across the four large maps the game launched with. Sure, it’s frustrating when you lose everything, but there’s usually a lesson to be learned from each failure, even if that lesson is that humans can’t be trusted. Cheaters are a concern for nearly all multiplayer games, but they’ve become an especially controversial subject amongst players recently.
Arc Raiders is taking over Steam with a new all-time concurrent player high of 462,488, surpassing Helldivers 2
Because yes, this is an extraction shooter, and ARC aren’t always the most deadly thing you’ll face topside. Other players you encounter could be friendly, or they could want to avoid searching all the drawers, car hoods and electrical cabinets in favor of murdering you and looting your corpse instead. Players are using scripts to automate weapon firing and exploit weapon swap speed glitches, performing maneuvers that would be nearly impossible to execute manually. Weapons fire with inhuman precision, and the ability to switch between guns almost instantly allows cheaters to chain attacks perfectly, overwhelming anyone playing legitimately. This makes firefights feel completely unfair, turning skill-based encounters into exercises in frustration for honest players.
Level Up Your News Game
When you first get started in ARC Raiders, you’ll feel like a very small fish in a very big, inhospitable pond. Gradually, though, you’ll start to amass a collection of gear, weapons, and components that, cumulatively, contribute to a better chance at survival every time you venture topside into the “Rust Belt”. Fortunately, Embark’s decision to include a “Free Loadout” option alleviates much of that risk.
ARC Raiders offers players the option to take a Free Loadout of basic gear into the Rust Belt if they don’t want to risk losing their best weapons. While initial feedback for ARC Raiders’ PvE mode was mostly positive, the dev team could see that there was something missing that would impact player retention in the long run. ARC Raiders was planned to be a free-to-play game at first, but ultimately ended up costing a premium price. Strandberg notes that the studio “couldn’t replicate the sessions consistently enough” in terms of ensuring that players could have a fulfilling experience each time they dropped into a session. Coupled with the free-to-play aspect, Embark was worried that ARC Raiders players wouldn’t be engaging enough to retain the necessary player base to succeed.
Meanwhile, the design of an extraction shooter shifts weekly during development and after launch. Loot tables are adjusted, objectives move, encounter pacing gets tuned, and entire quest lines can be rewritten or cut. That misalignment between “slow” VO and “fast” gameplay iteration is exactly what Embark is trying to compress. The game takes aggressive behaviour into account when matching you with other players.
All locations feature different weather and times of day, and on top of that at times a location might have special conditions applied. These are events that take place on a map that changes how this map is played and what rewards it offers. Some of these are called Night Raids that take place at night (duh), where the loot is better and the threat of ARC is higher. Other conditions are Harvest Season that offers higher yield of nature loot, or Electromagnetic Storm, Hidden Bunkers etc. to name a few. The Rust belt is a place of constant change and offers all kinds of challenges. Because they’re attracted by noise, enemies often disrupt fights with other players, and that’s where the best moments emerge.
ARC Raiders takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, where superintelligent machines of unknown origin rule the surface and humans are forced underground. You play as a raider, an elite soldier with a bad haircut and a playdough face who dares to brave the surface, armed with kitbashed weapons, to scavenge for the supplies that keep the underground city of Speranza ticking. Arc Raiders launched for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X
“We introduced a system where we also matchmake based on how prone you are to PvP or PvE,” the CEO explained. ARC Raiders is one of the best titles to come out last year, being praised for how it handles its multiplayer to create an exciting extraction shooter. Given how many matches players experience positively, players have long speculated on what matchmaking the game uses to retain its audience so well.
Smart players are starting to build their own ARC Raiders etiquette — if you can’t loot, don’t kill — so players can extract together without getting each other botted on. You learn what to take from them and what to leave, and how those items you scavenge might help you survive the next encounter. Yesterday was its biggest day ever by DAUs (3.2M).Daily copies sold started to stabilise by early Dec, but a well-timed 20% discount across all platforms – and the holiday boost – reversed that.What a ride. Players phase through walls, skip sections of levels, and occupy areas that were never intended to be accessible. Rooftops, hidden corners, and entire off-limits zones become ambush points, made even more lethal when combined with FoV and macro-enhanced precision.
Battlefield 6 has quietly become a strong performer after its own rocky history for the franchise, and it is sitting just below ARC Raiders on Steam’s charts with a peak of nearly 300,000 concurrent players around the same weekend. Now, according to Alinea Analytics, Embark Studio’s third-person extraction shooter has reached a new milestone, with over 12 million copies sold, says analyst Rhys Elliot. “So ARC Raiders passed 12M copies sold over the weekend (Alinea estimates),” Elliot wrote in a post on Bluesky.
Arc Raiders has always stood out in the crowded field of shooters for its high-quality dynamic environments and high-stakes gameplay. Players are constantly rewarded for strategy and skill, and because of this, it’s a game that demands attention. That commitment is what has made its community so invested, and why the game is still dominating the charts months after release. Needless to say, players should have plenty of fresh reasons to jump back in soon.
