A development team presented an explosive shooter in 2021. During internal tests, it was found that the game wasn’t fun. Therefore, the release was postponed for many years. At the end of October, it should finally be time, and Arc Raiders is set to finally launch.
Which game is it about? The shooter Arc Raiders was first introduced at the Game Awards in 2021 and was supposed to be an explosive and new PvE shooter. But it turned out completely differently.
The head of the developer studio Embark Studios recently explained in an interview with the English magazine Edge (via PCGamesn.com) that they completely revamped the game. According to him, it wasn’t fun at the time, which is why many ideas were discarded and the game was completely changed. Changes that were not well received by all fans, as he reported himself.
The developers subsequently postponed Arc: Raiders, and that multiple times. But by the end of 2025, it should finally be time.
Because the shooter isn’t fun, it will be completely rebuilt in 3 years
Aleksandr Grondal, then Executive Producer at Embark, and CEO Patrick Soderlund spoke together with the magazine Edge.
Officially, Arc Raiders was supposed to be released around 6 months after its presentation at the Game Awards 2021, and Aleksandr Grondal was supposed to take care of the final touches of the shooter as Executive Producer. “There are moments that are fun, but it doesn’t come together,” Grondal explained in the interview.
Soderlund viewed the state of the game more pessimistically than Grondal and stated that the shooter simply wasn’t fun. For this reason, they completely rebuilt the shooter. From a pure PvE shooter, it finally became a PvPvE extraction shooter:
We loved every aspect of what we were trying to design. But after quite a long time, we concluded: ‘Guys, this game isn’t fun.’
The shift away from pure PvE to PvPvE extraction gameplay was sharply criticized by fans at the time. Criticism that CEO Soderlund claims to understand, but he was convinced that the decision at that time was the right one.
When will the shooter be released now? After a total of 6 years of development, the shooter is now set to officially launch on Steam on October 30, 2025, 3 years later than planned. The shooter is already among the most desired games on Steam. After the first beta tests were very positively received by players, expectations are high that the new shooter can also convince at release.
An MMO expert recently took a look at ARC Raiders and analyzed what the shooter does better than its competitor Marathon, which is also set to release this year. Marathon is even coming out a month earlier, but the expert believes already that ARC Raiders will be better: MMO expert is known for sharp criticism, explains why ARC: Raiders succeeds in what Marathon cannot achieve
