How Arc Raiders Proved Everyone Wrong About Extraction Shooters
The extraction shooter genre's been dominated by hardcore, punishing experiences for years now. Games that make you sweat over every piece of loot, where one mistake costs you hours of progress, and where the monetisation model slowly bleeds your wallet dry through endless microtransactions and battle passes.
Then Embark Studios came along and said "nah, we're doing this differently."
Arc Raiders launched on 30th October 2025, and within three days it had sold over 1.5 million copies on Steam alone. It hit 354,836 concurrent players, smashed through to become Steam's #1 best-seller, and currently sits with a 90% positive review rating. Not bad for a new IP in a genre that's notoriously difficult to crack.
But here's the really interesting bit - they completely changed their approach midway through development, and it's paid off spectacularly.
The Big Pivot
Originally, Arc Raiders was meant to be free-to-play. Makes sense, right? That's how The Finals (Embark's previous game) worked, and it's pretty much the standard model for live service shooters these days. Get people in the door for free, then monetise them through cosmetics, battle passes, and premium currencies.
Except Embark looked at what they were building and realised something: this game worked better as a premium experience.
Executive Producer Aleksander Grøndal put it simply: "After careful assessment, we decided the premium business model is a great fit for the experience that we're building. For free-to-play games, they need to strike a careful balance between providing engaging content and encouraging players to make purchases. For Arc Raiders, this shift will allow us to focus more on the engagement, fun, and impact on choices."
So they stuck a £33/$40 price tag on it and called it a day.
Why This Actually Matters
On paper, this sounds like a terrible business decision. Free-to-play games can make absolute bank - just look at Fortnite, Apex Legends, or even The Finals. Why would you charge people upfront when you could get millions more players through the door for free?
Because here's the thing: when your entire business model depends on getting people to buy things inside your game, you have to design around that. Every system, every progression path, every cosmetic drop has to be carefully balanced to nudge players towards opening their wallets. It's not evil or anything - it's just business - but it does fundamentally change how you approach game design.
By going premium, Embark freed themselves from that pressure. They could focus on making the game fun and balanced without constantly asking "but how does this drive microtransaction revenue?"
Yes, Arc Raiders still has a battle pass and cosmetic microtransactions - it's a live service game, they need ongoing revenue for servers and content updates. But all the actual gameplay content is yours when you buy the game. No weapons locked behind paywalls, no essential gear that requires grinding premium currency, no advantages for people who spend more money.
Just a properly balanced extraction shooter where everyone's on equal footing.
The Market Spoke
And blimey, did people respond to that.
Within hours of launch, Arc Raiders was sitting at the top of Steam's best-sellers list, beating out massive franchises and established titles. It became the most popular extraction shooter on the entire platform - crushing games like Escape from Tarkov that have been at this for years.
The servers got absolutely hammered on launch weekend, with queues stretching for hours as hundreds of thousands of players tried to get in. That's the kind of problem most game studios dream about having.
What's particularly impressive is how well it's performing compared to other extraction shooters. The genre's been around for a while now, but it's always felt a bit niche - hardcore players love it, but the combination of punishing mechanics and often aggressive monetisation keeps casual players away.
Arc Raiders found a middle ground. It's still got that tension and risk-reward loop that makes extraction shooters compelling, but it's more approachable. Third-person perspective instead of first-person helps with situational awareness. The sci-fi setting with robot enemies means you're not just constantly fighting other players. And crucially, when you die, you're not losing gear you spent real money on through some convoluted premium currency system.
Where the Game Really Shines
As a console player who normally avoids crossplay like the plague, I was sceptical. We've all been there - stuck in lobbies with PC players who can spin around and headshot you before you've even registered they're there. But Arc Raiders handles it differently.
Whether you're playing with crossplay enabled or keeping it console-only, the game feels balanced. You're not getting destroyed by mouse and keyboard players with pixel-perfect aim, because the game's design doesn't rely purely on twitch reflexes. Positioning matters. Strategy matters. Knowing when to fight and when to scarper matters more than whether you can flick-shot someone's head off.
The community that's formed around the game has been brilliant as well. Proximity chat was one of those features that could've gone either way - it's either toxic nonsense or absolute gold. Thankfully, Arc Raiders landed firmly in the latter camp. I've had moments where I've been creeping through an abandoned facility, heard footsteps, and suddenly someone's voice crackles through: "Mate, I'm just trying to do a quest, don't shoot."
What follows is usually either a hilarious negotiation, an uneasy alliance against the robotic hordes, or an absolutely mental firefight where both sides are laughing through the chaos. I've made genuine friends through these random encounters - people I've gone on to squad up with properly. That sense of unpredictability, where every player interaction could go any direction, keeps the game feeling fresh even after sinking tonnes of hours into it.
The PvE element adds another layer to these trust dynamics. When you're both getting absolutely battered by a massive robot and you've got to decide whether to help this random player or let them get mulched and then nick their loot, there's proper tension there. I've had firefights turn into impromptu truces when a drone swarm descends on us both. I've also had what I thought was a friendly co-op session turn into a knife in the back at the extraction point.
Speaking of extraction points - bloody hell, those final moments are intense. You've survived the robots, you've got your loot, and now you're standing at the extraction waiting for your ride out. Then you hear footsteps. Someone else is coming. Do you trust them? Do you make room? Do you open fire first and ask questions never? I've won some of these standoffs and lost plenty more, but every single one gets the heart racing.
The game's still got plenty of depth to explore as well. Even after all the hours I've put in, I'm still learning the maps, figuring out optimal routes, discovering which robots have exploitable patterns, and getting to grips with the crafting system. There's a proper learning curve here, but it never feels unfair or artificially padded out to drive engagement metrics.
And it doesn't hurt that the game is absolutely gorgeous. The retro-futuristic aesthetic, the way light filters through ruined buildings, the mechanical precision of the robot designs - Embark clearly put serious work into making this world feel both beautiful and threatening. It's one of those games where you occasionally just stop and appreciate the view, even when there's a killer robot spider probably closing in on your position.
What This Means Going Forward
Look, I'm not saying every game should be premium and abandon free-to-play. Different models work for different games, and there are plenty of F2P titles that do it brilliantly.
But Arc Raiders proves there's still an appetite for games that just... let you play them. Where you pay your money upfront, and in return you get the whole experience without constant prompts to buy this or unlock that.
In an industry that's increasingly dominated by live service games trying to monetise every aspect of the player experience, that's genuinely refreshing. And judging by those player numbers and reviews, plenty of other people think so too.
Embark Studios took a risk. They could've gone the safe route with free-to-play, potentially reached a much larger audience, and followed the established playbook for extraction shooters. Instead, they charged a reasonable price, focused on making a properly balanced game, and trusted that players would respond to quality over aggressive monetisation.
Turns out they were right.