With PvPvE extraction shooter ARC Raiders coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S on October 30, developer Embark Studios has revealed that, during its development, the game was internally delayed several times. In an interview with Edge Magazine (via PCGamesN), studio CEO Patrick Soderlund spoke about wanting to make a game that they would want to play.
Problems arose, however, when Soderlund noted that early builds of ARC Raiders didn’t quite feel as fun to play as the original 2022 announce trailer indicated that it would. Ultimately, the decision was made to push the game back for further development. “We loved every aspect of what we were trying to design,” said Soderlund. “But we came to the conclusion, after quite a long time: ‘Guys, this game is not fun’.” It was with this delay that the decision was made to turn what was originally going to be a PvE game into a PvPvE game.
Executive producer Aleksandr Grondal was eventually brought into the team in the last six months of its development. “It took me a long time to understand what we were even trying to do,” he explained. When it came to looking at earlier builds of ARC Raiders, Grondal said, “There’s moments of fun, but it doesn’t consistently gel.”
Interestingly, Embark Studios didn’t originally want to make yet another PvP game, especially since it already had a popular competitive shooter in the form of The Finals. The developers put this down to being “tired of PvP” after not only having worked on The Finals, but also having worked on a number of other PvP titles during their time with EA and DICE.
ARC Raiders was originally also planned as a free-to-play game. Back in August 2024, however, the studio announced that it was pivoting the project to instead be a premium game priced at $39.99. Along with this, a playtest for the PC version of ARC Raiders was also announced, which will start on October 24 and end on October 27 – just a few days before its release.
“There are many reasons for this change, and they all boil down to our conviction that a premium business model is a better fit for the type of game we’re building,” said the studio. “A premium model allows us to create a more focused, balanced, and engaging action-survival experience.”
For more impatient players, ARC Raiders will also be hosting a server slam event from October 17 to October 19, during which players will be invited to play the game and stress the servers as much as possible. This is being done in order to make sure that the ARC Raiders servers are able to perform well when the title comes out at the end of the month.
Along with this, pre-orders for ARC Raiders had also been kicked off last month. Alongside the $39.99 standard edition, there is also a Deluxe Edition priced at $59.99. The latter includes a host of in-game goodies, including emotes, a backpack attachment, a new backpack, and cosmetic items.
