ARC Raiders has just been released and has since captivated hundreds of thousands of players. Over the weekend, a new milestone was reached, but it also brought problems with it.
What milestone has ARC Raiders reached? On November 2, 2025, at 21:50 CET, ARC Raiders reached a new all-time high with 354,836 concurrent players on Steam (see SteamDB). In comparison, on release day, October 30, 2025, there was a peak of 264,673 concurrent players.
Since launch, the player counts have been in a significant upward trend, showing how successful the new extraction shooter is performing and exciting players. Often, player numbers are particularly high in the first few days after release before they typically flatten out. The 88% positive ratings on Steam speak for themselves (see Steam). Since ARC Raiders is also playable on Xbox and PlayStation as well as the Epic Games Launcher, the actual player count is likely much higher.
However, this influx of players brings not only great joy for the developers but also some problems, the source of which they could only manage by introducing a queue.
“I think we killed the game”
What was the problem? The influx of players led to various problems yesterday evening, November 2, 2025, almost simultaneously with the new peak. The servers could hardly handle the player mass, and many users spoke up on Reddit, reporting issues with long wait times in matchmaking.
They often encountered error code ARMR0002, which prevented players from returning to the game. Temporary queues had to be implemented in ARC Raiders to “minimize issues related to group formation and the use of voice channels, resulting in longer than usual player searches” (see Discord).
Many players also expressed their frustration on the official Discord server, prompting developers to implement a 15-minute wait time between user messages to manage the situation.
However, many users took it with humor, such as Reddit user CaelusTheWolf, who opened his thread with “I think we killed the game with the number of players” and an image of the error code. In the comments, it continues: “No server means no ARCs, no ARCs means humanity has won the fight”.
Meanwhile, the situation has calmed down somewhat, and the number of concurrent players has decreased slightly. However, the trend shows how successful ARC Raiders is currently performing, meaning the situation could change quickly. The developers are aware of this and are working to manage the situation comprehensively.
If you are among those diving into the world of ARC Raiders for the first time with the release, the variety of different skills and weapons can be overwhelming at first. Therefore, we have curated suitable weapons for all possible situations that you can’t go wrong with: ARC Raiders: The best weapons for every situation
