Arc Raiders, the PvPvE extraction shooter by Embark studios, has been topping the charts on Steam since its release last Thursday, October 30th. Not only has the game been high in the best sellers list–cozying up to other industry giants like Battlefield 6 and Counter-Strike–but its peak concurrent player count has lingered around 300,000 for over five days now. The game has had a relatively spotless launch as well, with very little reports of bugs, server outages, or even general criticism beyond mild, relatively subjective gripes about PvP.
One of the more unique aspects of the game that has the community abuzz is the unlikely alliances players are making with one another during raids using the games’ proximity chat and emotes. Unlike the other major extraction shooters Escape from Tarkov and Hunt: Showdown, although there are plenty of reasons to fight other players, the loot in the maps is abundant and the threat the PvE provides is strong enough that many are deciding to extend the kindness of peace to other raiders. This makes for a very interesting dynamic that causes every encounter with another player to be a little more complicated than just killing them on sight, which compliments the tension Arc Raiders aims to evoke as well as making the game forgiving for those unskilled at PvP engagements. It also provides for some popular moments such as the one depicted in this tweet by a community posting account:
So far, content creators and the broader playerbase have attested to both the game’s take on extraction gameplay and its immersive visuals and sound design. Arc Raiders takes place in a fictional retro-futuristic region of Italy, The Rust Belt, and has the player slink through the remnants of residential zones, rusted laboratories, and towering industrial ruins, all of which can likely attribute their decrepit state to the multitude of autonomous death robots roaming amongst them. These robots are called ARC–thus the game’s namesake–and constitute the non-player threat that players have to deal with. Some of the large ones leap at you with frightening speed, others fly around reporting your location to other ARC, some launch lethal barrages of missiles at you, and unfortunately for arachnophobes, some of them are small and “spider-like.” You and up to two other friends can squad up and take on the ARC for the resources they offer, or simply swat them away so you can scavenge the many loot-filled hotzones of The Rust Belt. Or, provided you have the skill and possibly a lack of diplomacy, you could stalk other squads through the map, gun them down, and steal their stuff. The emergent gameplay Arc Raiders has to offer with its player politics and dynamic robotic forces is truly awe-inspiring, so it’s no wonder that at least as of right now the game is successful as it is.