The extraction shooter Arc Raiders has many fans on Steam. Although the release is still months away, the developers are now sharing what they are currently working on, providing an important insight into the game.
What kind of shooter is it? Arc Raiders is an extraction shooter from Embark Studios, who have already achieved significant success with their shooter “The Finals”. While The Finals offers an arena shooter with colorful effects, unique weapons, and esports commentators, Arc Raiders aims to take a completely different approach.
The shooter takes place in a dystopian world where robots have taken over the planet and the remaining humans hide in underground bunkers. As a player, you belong to a group that repeatedly emerges to the surface to loot items and supply the people in the bunker with the essentials.
However, alongside the robots on the surface, other looters are not all friendly and may open fire at any time. Only those who make it back to the bunker may keep their items.
Here you can watch the trailer for the game:
An update during the wait
How is the development going? While over 160,000 players, according to SteamDB, are already waiting for the game, the developers provide insight into the development of the shooter with their new update.
Currently, the developers are mainly focusing on the theme of risk and reward. Accordingly, they are considering how to design the maps and loot so that a high risk also offers a corresponding reward. Loot should not be too easily accessible and players should not be able to reach safety without a fight.
For this, the developers explained in a long post on Discord that they evaluated data from the last playtest. At that time, more than 20,000 players were online simultaneously (via SteamDB). The developers shared a heatmap that shows where players were located on the map “Dam”.
This allows for analyzing areas and determining where players are more or less frequently than planned. Here you can see the map:
What does the result look like? The developers discovered several locations that were visited more frequently than expected. Instead of removing them, the developers decided to further develop and beautify them.
Another feature is currently being revised, the so-called “Hatch Keys”. During the last playtest of the game, Hatch Keys could be used to open hatches all over the map, allowing for easy extraction from a round.
However, the developers’ analysis shows that high-level players used these hatches over 40% of the time to escape from a level. This is not the intention of the game, according to the developers:
Hatches are safer but also more boring to use, and they offer a 3-for-1 deal when retreating with a squad. We want the heart rate to rise when attempting to escape, and that cannot happen if you can just drop into a hole in the ground. This means that we need to rethink how Hatch Keys are obtained and ensure that using a key is a decision that must be carefully weighed, and not something to rely on for every extraction.
Developers of Arc Raiders on Discord
The developers plan to adjust many of the areas before the release on October 30, 2025, and create a better mix of risk and reward than what was seen in the last beta.
Until the release of Arc Raiders, there is still much to do. Whether the developers can compete against the strong competition from Battlefield 6 remains to be seen. The AAA shooter is set to release just 20 days earlier: Battlefield 6: All important info on release, beta, and early access
