ARC Raiders launched just a few days after Battlefield 6, but that was completely irrelevant to the studio. The important thing was to avoid another competitor.
Where do the statements come from? Patrick Söderlund, one of the founders and current CEO of Embark Studios (ARC Raiders, The Finals), spoke in an interview with GamesBeat about the release of ARC Raiders and the competition.
Before Söderlund co-founded Embark in 2018 with Magnus Nordin, Rob Runesson, Stefan Strandberg, Jenny Huldschiner, and Johan Andersson, he worked at DICE and later at EA for several years. He served as CEO and Vice President of DICE and as Executive Vice President of EA’s Worldwide Studios.
Söderlund is credited for his time at DICE and EA in the credits of games like Battlefield (e.g., 3, 4, and 1), Titanfall 2, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and Dragon Age: Inquisition.
ARC Raiders shows no fear of competition
What does he say about the release and Battlefield 6? Söderlund mentions in the interview that the team at Embark talked a lot about the release date. They considered whether it made sense to launch so close to Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: “We had very, very serious discussions about this specific issue, really. We talked about: ‘Should we move the game?'”
Söderlund explains that Embark was confident that ARC Raiders did not need to hide from the competition:
After some back and forth, we concluded that we have a game that is very strong. We also believed that we could reach a position where we are competitive in a different way. Of course, we didn’t think of the game as a ‘Battlefield’ title, but we found that the game has enough uniqueness to stand on its own.
Söderlund mentions that they had a well-founded assumption of when Battlefield 6 would be released. Additionally, they were also confident about the rough release window of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 – nevertheless, they did not want to deviate from the set schedule:
“We wondered: ‘Hmm, did we really make the right decision?’ We talked about moving it elsewhere. But at the end of the day, we felt that the game was ready for launch. We felt that the game offers something completely different from these other titles.”
In conclusion, Söderlund states that they also collected important data during the final test just before the release, the so-called server slam, which gave them further confidence in the launch.
Which game was ARC Raiders still afraid of? As Söderlund reveals in the interview, Embark Studios was afraid of GTA 6 and deliberately wanted to avoid the action game: “The first dialogue we had obviously revolved around GTA. We didn’t want to be near them. I believe no one wanted to be near them.”
Embark observed closely what Rockstar Games and GTA 6 planned when determining a release date before making a decision: “We waited for them to announce their launch date. Once that was out, we decided: Okay, good, now we have a solution where we can somewhat distance ourselves and set a date.”
The release of GTA 6 is a topic that has been occupying the entire gaming industry for years now. For other studios, it is particularly important to avoid the launch of the game as broadly as possible since the expectations for the highly anticipated title are extremely high. Even the biggest publishers fear the release of GTA 6
