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.
Stay in the loop
The official ARC Raiders YouTube channel has posted the first episode in a docuseries highlighting the game’s development. In this video, members of the ARC Raiders dev team detail the choice to add PvP gameplay deep into the game’s development cycle after coming to the conclusion that PvE wouldn’t provide a sustainable gameplay loop. In proximity chat or team comms, you can have your real‑time speech transformed into one of multiple Raider voice presets. For players who dislike talking to strangers in their own voice, or who worry about harassment, that feature is a genuine draw.
- When even long-time Call of Duty fans say they have “been playing Battlefield 6 so much” that they did not realize Black Ops 7 had launched, that is less about platform splits and more about mindshare.
- Due to the abundance of PvE systems, the SBMM in ARC Raiders feels a lot less strict than other shooters like Black Ops 7 or Battlefield 6.
- That might seem counterintuitive for a shooter, but it only makes the eventual firefights that do break out that much more action-packed.
- The Traders of Speranza are central figures in the community, and as you will find out – they often have different agendas.
- 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.
- Players emerge from underground to fight unfeeling robot harvesters, scrape together resources, and carve out space for human agency.
- Because yes, this is an extraction shooter, and ARC aren’t always the most deadly thing you’ll face topside.
- Despite previous claims from Embark’s CEO, Patrick Söderlund, Watkins says there isn’t any form of skill-based matchmaking taken into consideration either.
What other unwritten rules do you have to share with ARC Raiders players?
When I first started playing, I assumed — as did many others, from browsing the game’s subreddit and speaking to friends — that these would change each round, so the same places don’t become guaranteed high-traffic areas. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case, and anyone who has paid a visit to Research & Administration on Dam Battlegrounds or Medical Research on Stella Montis can attest to this. Embark Studio’s other PvP-centric title, The Finals, shifted to the forefront of development, giving the ARC Raiders team time to fine-tune how the game’s PvPvE gameplay would work.
Palworld’s Struggles Reveal an Often Overlooked Downside of Big Indie Games
- But as more dedicated players continue to increase their skills and weapon loadouts, we could see the gap currently forming get even bigger.
- Interestingly, I’ve seen some players even argue that Arc Raiders is currently going through an identity crisis.
- In the beginning you can only access one map, the Dam Battlegrounds, but others such as the wrecked urban landscape of Buried City and the deadly industrial complex Stella Montis open up later.
- The human acting that is recorded — especially for ensemble scenes — remains central to the studio’s narrative ambitions.
- 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.
- 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.
Worst of all, many of these positions are completely lopsided, letting the exploiter shoot through walls while the ambushed player has no chance to fight back. This particular cheating is most often pinpointed on the Stella Montis map, with many players reporting this as an ongoing issue. Each map in Arc Raiders has myriad points of interest, some of which are designated as having either medium or high value loot.
- Your workshop itself can be upgraded too and as you progress you will be able to craft more and better gear.
- Topside is the place where you spend most of your time in ARC Raiders looking for valuable loot.
- ARC Raiders is one of the better on-ramps into the world of extraction shooters, thanks to its more leveled playing field and willingness to embrace a more casual audience, but that’s not to say that the game doesn’t present a fair challenge.
- The simplest solution is to make it a schedule that rotates for an odd number of hours.
- That pattern makes it extremely likely that Black Ops 7 is attracting a much larger audience than its Steam count implies, especially once holiday console sales are factored in.
- Black Ops 6 launched on Steam with a peak of roughly 315,000 concurrent players.
ARC Raiders Stella Montis Complete Looting Guide
The speed and variety of these exploits, combined with how quickly new ones appear, suggest systemic weaknesses rather than isolated incidents. As one exploit is patched, another surfaces, often even more destructive than the last. The planet has suffered an ecological disaster that has wiped out most of the population and most technology. Now, a robotic alien invasion force named Arc has arrived to plunder all the remaining natural resources and kill off humanity, forcing everyone to flee underground, where a vast subterranean city named Toledo has been built.
Why Steam doesn’t tell the whole Call of Duty story
According to fans of the extraction shooter, the multiplayer is becoming the next Fortnite in terms of skill level differences between players. It reached almost half a million concurrent PC players during the same weekend Black Ops 7 launched, roughly five times the Call of Duty title’s peak on that platform. That number also represented a new high for ARC Raiders, which had already climbed past its previous record of around 416,000 concurrent players only ten days after release. Arc Raiders has been on a monumental run since it launched a couple of weeks back. Earlier today, the game recorded a peak player count of 481,966 users, a new high and a stunning figure for any extraction shooter.
Fallout Season 2 Episode 7 Release Date Countdown & Start Times
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, arc raiders safe hack 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.
Battlefield 6: Best Assault Class Loadouts
Then they walk up to a key merchant or quest-giver and are greeted by a voice that many describe as lifeless or synthetic — one that exists only because a model can now stand in for a person who might otherwise have been hired again. These players just want to enjoy Arc Raiders by focusing on the game’s incredible NPC enemies and world challenges. And finally, there are the casual players who fall into the middle and who just want to enjoy both aspects. Then there are the quests, which require you to visit points of interest and scavenge or fix specific things around each map, sending teams to similar locations where they might clash. Your raider also sends up a flare when they die, giving everyone in the match a bead on your location, but these can also be faked with remote controlled flares you can place down and use as a clever distraction. Some skirt by and avoid you entirely, others watch silently from a nearby hedge, some want to be pals, some shoot first and some will pretend to be friendly before shooting you in the back.
Would you change anything about the matchmaking system in ARC Raiders?
Your first location will be Dam Battlegrounds, a map that offers forests, swamps, old research centers and apartment buildings. We also have larger machines like the Leaper, who patrols outside and poses massive threat with its destructive leap attack. Embark confirmed it is taking action against the cheating problem in a message posted in its official Discord server. The note comes with an acknowledgement of the discussion surrounding cheaters in the community, promising that the studio is “taking this issue very seriously” as it awaits further feedback. If you play primarily on PC and care about where the energy is right now, ARC Raiders and Battlefield 6 have the momentum. If your friends are on console and live in the Call of Duty ecosystem, Black Ops 7 will likely still be the default every‑night shooter, even in a comparatively down year.
Arc Raiders Officially Snubbed for GOTY By The Game Awards
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.
Do you think ARC Raiders needs a PvE-only mode?
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.
How to Craft Industrial Explosives in Arknights: Endfield
- It hasn’t even dropped below 250K concurrent players since launch, according to SteamDB.
- Elevators also make lots of noise, drawing ARC and alerting other nearby players to the fact you’re trying to escape.
- For them, Arc Raiders’ standout qualities — encounter design, progression loop, co-op chaos — easily outweigh any irritation with merchant bark lines, even if they admit that some voices could be better.
- While skill-based matchmaking is often used in titles like Call of Duty (up until Black Ops 7, at least), Embark says it plans to continue with its current system and will “keep monitoring match health and player response, and tune it from there.”
- First, the game will organize players based on their estimated skill level, then it will organize them further based on their gameplay preferences.
- It’s like little things like that.” The popular streamer then said he was shocked at how quickly player skill levels had jumped in just under a month from the game’s launch.
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.
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.
ARC Raiders Dev Clarifies How ‘Aggression-Based Matchmaking’ Works
It lets you get to grips with the area and do a bit of looting without the risk of losing valuable equipment. 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. If you survive, you can visit the trader named Lance and swap your basic Augment for a better one for no charge.
New Steam Game is Like Stardew Valley Set in Rural Japan
What’s surprising about ARC Raiders isn’t that it’s a popular game that sold well; there was a lot of hype leading up to its launch, and developer Embark Studios already had a lot of great feedback from the beta tests it ran. Its staying power and continued upward momentum are what’s surprising, as no one could have predicted it would continue to be one of the most-played games on Steam each and every day since it arrived. Overlay hacks, wallhacks, and radar tools are making opponents and loot visible through terrain, stripping exploration of all tension. Some players push this further, editing game files to remove shadows entirely, while simultaneously cranking the field of view far beyond normal limits.
Based on the CEO’s comments, solos, duos, trios, and any other pairings of players work in the same way, factoring in multiple systems at the same time. First, the game will organize players based on their estimated skill level, then it will organize them further based on their gameplay preferences. This “aggression-based matchmaking” hasn’t been in the game for very long, as it is a system the Embark CEO says has only been put in for around a week or so. However, as time goes on, this system could serve to make sure players are always getting the experience they want every time they queue up for a match. According to a recent GameRant article, an interview with Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderlund has given more context surrounding ARC Raiders matchmaking. For starters, the game uses skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) like other shooters, such as Call of Duty and Battlefield’s recent entries.
Do you think ARC Raiders needs a PvE-only mode?
The PvP element that has become somewhat controversial among ARC Raiders players wasn’t added until far later into development, creating a noticeable shift away from Embark’s original PvE vision for the game. Arc Raiders is available on PC, Xbox and PS5 and I’d recommend getting a gaming headset so you can chat to other players, if you haven’t got one. Also, listening to the world through headphones gives you a better understanding of where threats are coming from.
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
ARC is by far not the only threat topside, there are other Raiders up there, as well. Maybe you can make a friend or two, but watch your back as other Raiders are competing for the same loot. You can choose to go alone or as a squad of up to 3 players, all viable in different ways.The matchmaking will prioritize Squad vs. Squads and Solos vs. Solos.
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.
Now, in a new interview with GamesRadar+, design lead Virgil Watkins has expanded on how the system works. “It’s a bit of a misnomer calling it aggression-based,” the developer told the outlet. He goes on to explain that Embark is going to keep tuning the way the system works, “but people aren’t far off in how they think it works.”
It has since been reported that cheaters are now receiving bans, albeit only temporary ones. The design lead then went on to break down the circumstances behind any PvP engagements and whether or not the system can actually differentiate between self-defense or straight-up aggression. “We can track who shoots first and who takes damage and who [does] whatever,” the developer says. 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. Even when playing ARC Raiders with a squad, it’s still important to know when it’s best to simply avoid conflict altogether.
And considering why people are still playing ARC Raiders, as well as what is yet to come for the game, those numbers could continue to rise even beyond the peaks they’ve already achieved. While Steam player counts aren’t everything in a cross-platform game like ARC Raiders, they still offer a glimpse into the extent of its popularity. A closer look at its peaks over its first month helps show how that interest has both risen and settled over time. Despite previous claims from Embark’s CEO, Patrick Söderlund, Watkins says there isn’t any form of skill-based matchmaking taken into consideration either.
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.
Without shadows to hide in and with an expanded view of the battlefield, these cheaters can spot movements and positions that should remain hidden, turning every encounter into a lopsided fight. Communicating with other Raiders is a crucial part of the ARC Raiders experience. Not only does ARC Raiders offer proximity chat for solo players with microphones to use, but in-game voice and emote options also allow players without mics to communicate. 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. Rather than shooting on sight, talking to other Raiders frequently results in unexpected team-ups, or at least a parting of ways without the need for violence. At the beginning of each run, after you choose which map area you want to visit, the game offers you the chance to start with a free load-out, which includes a basic gun and some useful random items.
Topside is the place where you spend most of your time in ARC Raiders looking for valuable loot. This could be gameplay items you can use to your advantage or items you can bring back to craft with. ARC Raiders is a multiplayer extraction adventure, set in a lethal future earth, ravaged by a mysterious mechanized threat known as ARC. Elevators also make lots of noise, drawing ARC and alerting other nearby players to the fact you’re trying to escape. As things become more desperate, teams begin to plead with each other to escape together so everyone can get out with their loot. In a genius twist, even if you’re downed into the state where you can be revived so long as you don’t bleed out, you can still push the elevator button and escape as your health ebbs away.
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.
Aside from simply learning the meta and how to most efficiently find resources while completing ARC Raiders’ quests, the multiplayer aspect of the game is the primary source of the community’s unwritten rules. ARC Raiders gives players all the tools for success within its moment-to-moment gameplay, but the guidelines developed by the community will help players understand the social aspect of ARC Raiders as the game grows. As such, starting off on the right foot with the other Raiders of Speranza will set players up for the best ARC Raiders experience possible. Extraction shooters like ARC Raiders are full of do’s and don’ts that evolve as the community grows, and with tests like the server slam leading up to launch, the game has already seen a set of unwritten rules for player conduct develop. While ARC Raiders doesn’t require players to follow these rules, the community at large tends to abide by them to create an environment where all players can be successful. With ARC Raiders already hitting over 300,000 players on Steam alone, it’s clear that following these rules has fostered an accessible and engaging community.
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 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.