ARC Raiders roadmap
Embark
ARC Raiders has put up huge numbers since its official release this week and is attempting to be a long-term staple of the extraction shooter genre from here. Part of that plan is to put the “live” in live service with frequent updates, and it’s genuinely impressive just how much they’re coming out with in just the next two months alone.
Embark has released an ARC Raiders 2025 roadmap, despite the year almost being over. There are two updates coming in the next two months, and here’s what’s in them:
North Line – November
- New Map: Stella Montis
- Community Unlock Event
- New ARC: Matriarch and Shredder
- New Gameplay Items
- New Quests
Cold Snap – December
- Snowfall Map condition
- Flickering Flames Event
- Expedition Departure Window
- New Raider Deck
- New Quests
We don’t know if Embark will manage to keep up this pace every month going forward, which seems unlikely. Then again, new hero shooter Marvel Rivals has gotten on a track where it releases a new character every single month, so who knows. In any case, the idea is certainly to hook players during this early window here, and there’s at least one potential complication in early 2026.
That would be the release of Bungie’s Marathon, the other high-profile, $40 extraction shooter coming out in this window. There are three ways this can go: 1) ARC comes out on top, still engaging its currently large playerbase and Marathon suffers, 2) Marathon manages to pull players away from ARC as the newer option, 3) There are enough players for both games, and both are relative hits. Marathon has slipped into the “bad vibes” territory due to 2025 missteps, but internal tests have indicated the game is improving in time.
It is way, way too early to gauge the long-term health of ARC Raiders, as it’s only been out a few days. It had a peak of 264,000 concurrent players on Steam, well above the free open beta right before launch, which is impressive. What it “settles” into over time remains to be seen, but Embark is a smaller studio and its other project, The Finals, has a steady playerbase that may be low in the grand scheme of the market, but it’s working just fine for them. It seems more than likely that ARC may have a higher baseline, based on this opening here.
Big things ahead for ARC, and I have little doubt players are going to show up for these initial updates, including cool Christmas-ish things like an event and snowy maps.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
