ARC Raiders was a surprise success in 2025 that continues to this day. As is common in an extraction shooter, there eventually comes a wipe. In ARC Raiders, however, it was voluntary. But even though many players participated, the developers still want to improve a lot.
When ARC Raiders launched in October 2025, few would have thought how successful the extraction shooter would become. After all, even today, at peak times, there are between 300,000 and 400,000 players on Steam (via SteamDB).
On December 22, 2025, there was the typical extraction wipe. The developers behind the shooter, Embark Studios, gave players the choice. You could participate in the wipe and receive bonuses for the server reset based on your items and coins. If you declined, you simply continued playing on the remaining server.
In an interview with PCGamesN, the game’s design director, Virgil Watkins, revealed that a little over a million players
chose to participate in the wipe. However, that is still not enough for Embark.
Especially due to absurd situations, ARC Raiders is popular:
They want to analyze player data and adjust the wipe
What does Embark want to consider for the future? One of the biggest feedback topics regarding the wipe was the requirements for skill points upon reset. You could earn up to 5 skill points for the server restart, with 1 million coins (and the value of your gear) equaling one skill point.
He explains that they probably waited too long with the information. They wanted to wait to adjust the requirements to the actual economic power of the player base
instead of guessing too early. Watkins believes that the information led some players to feel pressured to reach that value.
According to the interview, of the nearly 1 million players who chose to participate in the wipe, about 35% to 40% of them reached the full 5 skill points. While they are satisfied with that, they want to make this process even more interesting in the future:
We are fully aware that it is not particularly motivating to only be after money, [and this] can lead to the use of your equipment becoming unattractive, which is what people actually look forward to at the end of a reset cycle.
Virgil Watkins on the requirements for wipe bonuses (Source: PCGamesN)
For future server wipes, they want to analyze how players liked the bonuses. They also want to look at how to encourage players who proceed more slowly or did not participate in the wipe to use the feature. They do not want these players to feel left behind.
Wipes are probably the most controversial topic in extraction shooters because you lose hard-earned loot. What do you think about it? Did you participate in the wipe in ARC Raiders, or did you stay in the first expedition? Feel free to let us know in the comments. But you should be careful about what you wear: Players of ARC Raiders rate 30 outfits based on how likely you will be shot in the shooter
