Extraction shooters are the next big multiplayer trend following the tsunami of battle royales a few years ago. The likes of Gray Zone Warfare, Arena Breakout Infinite, and Exoborne are all looking to replicate the success of forefathers like Escape From Tarkov. One that I’ve always been incredibly curious about is ARC Raiders from The Finals developer Embark Studios, and after a long time underground, it’s finally resurfaced. I’m pleased to say that, after attending a recent preview event, it’s looking like one of the more interesting extraction games, but it comes with one very big twist – when it drops next year, it will no longer be free to play.
Of course, this isn’t particularly unusual for an extraction shooter – Tarkov, Hunt Showdown 1896, and others are all paid games. However, ARC Raiders was initially billed to join the long list of free PC games alongside The Finals, one of my favorite new shooters of the last few years. Several genre newbies, such as the milsim duo of Delta Force Hawk Ops and Arena Breakout Infinite, are also looking to gain an advantage over their premium rivals by being free. But now, Embark has done a u-turn.
So why the switch, and how will that benefit ARC Raiders – a game that was initially born to be a Helldivers 2-style PvE co-op game but was reworked to become a PvPvE experience?
“After careful assessment, we decided that the premium business model is a great fit for this experience that we are building, and we’re aiming for a mid tier price point [of] around $40, give or take,” says executive producer Aleksander Grøndal. Later, he says that ARC Raiders is a “better game for it.”
“For free-to-play games, they need to strike a careful balance between providing engaging content and encouraging players to make purchases,” Grøndal explains. “For ARC Raiders, this shift will allow us to focus more on the engagement and fun, as well as how the game evolves over time so that we can optimize differently. [We can] give out more rewards, for example, as the player progresses.”
I am of course saying this as an early impression (I’ve not been hands-on with the actual gameplay), but from what I saw and heard during my preview, ARC Raiders personally feels like a game I’d happily drop $40 on. I know, however, that the volume of extraction shooters at the moment means that any new release or fresh look at upcoming ones is met with a bit of a groan. ‘Oh good, here’s another one.’ But I genuinely feel like ARC Raiders stands out, and even after checking myself for some recency bias, I think it is now my most anticipated game in the genre.
While the general premise of ‘survive in this post-disaster world’ is an overused one, the story, style, and details of ARC Raiders make it seem much more unique. You’re a member of an underground colony called Speranza, which houses survivors from the terrible, apocalyptic scenes on the surface – it reminded me initially of Fallout’s vaults. However, while the vaults pride themselves on self-sustenance, Seperanza will regularly send brave Raiders up into the daylight to scavenge for vital supplies and materials that it needs to survive.
While up top, the PvE threats you face during matches come in the form of ARC machines, which have taken over the planet – these range from small recon drones to enormous, towering colossi. Then of course, other player-controlled Raiders make up the PvP element. The world itself is split up into separate maps of varying sizes that will evolve and expand as part of Embark’s live service offering, and the environments look visually-impressive and worthy of exploration.
As was the case when it was first revealed before its transformation into an extraction shooter, ARC Raiders is third-person (which is still a surprise given the first-person thrills of The Finals) with shoulder switching for peeking corners, jump-rolling for dodging bullets or quickly getting behind cover, and a very heavy reliance on audio cues both for detecting other Raiders and ARC machines. As well as your guns, there’s a wide array of gadgets and equipment you can use for combat and traversal. While Embark doesn’t mention any specifically, I spotted smoke grenades, ziplines, and mines during the presentation.
When it comes to looting, there’s an inventory system that looks exactly like pretty much every other extraction shooter’s. If you die out in the field, you’ll lose everything that isn’t stashed in your “safe pocket.” Should you successfully extract and bring the goods back to Speranza, you can sell it to one of several trader NPCs. Doing so unlocks more customization options for your Raider so that you can build and improve your own underground home within the colony, which I personally think is a great touch.
The final big bit of news to come out of the preview event and today’s Gamescom announcement is that it won’t be long until players are able to get their hands on ARC Raiders.
The ARC Raiders release date will arrive at some point in 2025, however its first tech test will take place later this year between Thursday, October 24 and Sunday, October 27 on Steam.
Embark has been hard at work repurposing what it had to make ARC Raiders a compelling Tarkov rival, but it’s proud that its one through-line has been the universe it created. Being able to focus on player engagement and evolving that world over time versus trying to sell as many skins as it can sounds like the right call – the likes of Helldivers 2 have proven that selling multiplayer games at a middle price point is a viable strategy.
In the gaming sphere’s current climate, no multiplayer game is guaranteed success, but when I look at some of ARC Raiders’ competitors, I do feel an air of confidence. It avoids milsim tropes, the PvE combatants feel compelling, the motivator of building your own home inside the colony sounds great, and the third-person gameplay looks tight. Until I see more of Bungie’s Marathon, which sounds like it’s in a spot of bother following the developer’s recent issues, ARC Raiders is absolutely my most-anticipated extraction shooter right now.