"It's emboldened us to keep going": Arc Raiders dev dives deep on plans for bigger updates, changing Expeditions, and learning from the best and worst in players

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"It's emboldened us to keep going": Arc Raiders dev dives deep on plans for bigger updates, changing Expeditions, and learning from the best and worst in players Features By Austin Wood published 27 January 2026

Interview | Embark digs into PvP, gear fear, matchmaking, player trading, and a lot more

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Steam tells me I've put 250 hours into Arc Raiders since its October 30 launch, which is 250 more hours than I ever thought I would invest in an extraction shooter. Embark Studios' streamlined, retrofuturistic, and PvE-heavy approach to the formula defined by the likes of Escape from Tarkov has expanded the extraction space and grabbed over 12 million people. It has also exceeded Embark's expectations in every way possible, from meteoric sales to surprising player behavior.

Earlier this month, I sat down with design lead Virgil Watkins for a long chat about Arc Raiders' launch and Embark's future plans. We're starting to see those plans roll out now: on January 27, we got a big update called Headwinds, adding our very own Arc Raiders Bird City, making some quietly massive changes to the loot economy, letting the true sickos take on 1v3 lobbies, and introducing a new long-term goal about hunting Arc.

The Arc Raiders Escalation roadmap, covering planned updates through April, shows that the game is just getting warmed up for 2026. Likewise, Watkins makes it clear that Embark really is just getting started with Arc Raiders. With enviable wind in its sails, the studio is looking to add more of what players love, evaluate what they hate, and slip in what they don't expect. Armed with mountains of data that can track an item's lifespan or a player's actions with extreme granularity, Watkins gets into all of that and a lot more over the course of an hour. Here's our big, long interview, edited for clarity.

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Arc Raiders in 2026

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

GamesRadar+: To start, do you feel more relief the game's done well, or pressure now that a lot of people are hungry for more?

Virgil Watkins: Probably a bit of both, to be honest. Of course it's encouraging that people are still finding the game compelling and diving in, and bringing their friends. But yeah, we sense the appetite is there, so it kind of gives us that nice push to keep building and keep doing stuff for them.

With this war chest, are you making any changes internally, reinvesting to set up Arc Raiders for a long future?

Certainly, we're doing what we can to build up the team or reorg the team to support areas. Now that we have some time since launch, we can see what's working, what isn't, what players enjoy, what they might want to see improvements on. It lets us get a very clear picture of where we should focus effort, and new things we should invest in, and things like that.

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I know the launch wasn't a total surprise based on the number of wishlists and pre-orders you had, but what was the scene and mood inside the studio?

We had Tech Test 2, that had a good response. We had the Server Slam, which had a pretty big response, so I think we were ready. But yeah, the way it took off, I think, took all of us by surprise. Mostly it's, you catch each other in the hall or in a meeting, you go, 'What is going on? This is ridiculous.' Of course, we liked what we've done, and we think it's fun and stuff, but having this level of validation is pretty humbling.

Were you there at ground zero when they pressed the big red launch button?

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No, I wasn't. We have a very talented team who handles that, and honestly, I did not want to be in the way. But yeah, they set up in one of our large rooms, and they're all kind of huddled around the table, monitoring absolutely everything. We get the notification: all right, it's live. We get to watch the charts and stuff as players start logging in.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

You mentioned things that are working, things you could do better. What's an important thing you've learned about the game and the community since launch?

They're really good at finding bugs.

I think what we were pleasantly surprised by is, we thought we had done a lot to help facilitate people who weren't only into PvP and weren't there for just the extraction trappings. And feeling as though we hit the mark quite well, or even maybe exceeded our own expectations, about bringing players who are interested in other aspects into the game [...] so that players can play more socially or lean more toward the PvE side of things, or collaborative things. We were really thrilled by those investments that we made paying off.

And then, this probably shouldn't be a surprise, but how fast they can get through the content we make. I think taking a lot of those learnings about what content [players] find compelling, what content they blow through faster than we like – or things that are maybe too grind-y, on the other end – helps us calibrate a lot. Because we now have telemetry for millions of rounds played and the economic [loot] graphs for every single player. And we can do a lot of analysis on all of this stuff and really see how it's working.

I'm curious about the volume of data you have, the trajectory of a character and things like that.

Honestly, anything you can think of we probably have. We track everything. What do you see? What do you pick up? Do you drop it? Do you give it to somebody else? Do you die with it? Does it go in your safe pocket? Where'd you shoot from? Who'd you shoot? What'd you shoot with? We've got all of it.

One really great thing we did very shortly before launch or Server Slam is, we added the unstuck feature. The game detects – not always perfectly – if you're stuck in some geometry, and that generates telemetry for us and gives us an in-editor heat map that we can go to and literally look at every individual spot that's ever occurred, and it lets us really quickly go through and fix the geometry in those spots. It informs design decisions. It informs analyzing the economy.

We have quite a wealth of stuff that we can leverage. And we have a fantastic data team that helps us contextualize and turn this into graphs and charts and things for us to work with.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

I would kill to see a heat map of where people die the most.

We do have some of those. It's kind of fun. You've got to be a little careful with how you parcel the data, because otherwise, it is pure red. You've got to be a little more specific. But it definitely kicks up some interesting spots where you don't necessarily anticipate combat happening, but then you realize it's a result of, like, this activity spawns there, and the spawn points tend to collapse at this moment, and that's why it turns into a hot spot.

That lets us kind of assess where we're placing things and maybe adjusting. It's pretty cool. We even have a thing where you can play back a session in the editor using a particle system, so you can see where every drone is moving, where every player moved. You get a replay view.

Do any examples come to mind?

The amount of people that fall from the launch tower in Spaceport. You can see the ring of splats around it with all these unfortunate people, and the ones that get knocked off the zip lines in one way or another when they're going up and down.

Some of the other examples that stand out are where people kind of get used to the cadence of the way a session unfolds, and they'll set up good ambushes, because they know, 'Players will probably come through here. If I create a bit of a distraction with drones over there, I can probably get people.' So we see some pretty clever setups that people have managed to figure out over time.

We've heard that a lot of players have been more friendly, more in tune with the survival stealth side than some folks at Embark are, or expected. Has that surprising friendliness affected your thoughts on where to take this game?

Yeah, it certainly is surprising. Even us as developers, we have plenty of people on the team who prefer to play that way, but generally, we would shoot each other plenty. But now that we have actual live players and they're [playing friendly], it's very cool to see.

We did try to put in enough things in the game to help this facilitation. Like, the proximity voice, things like instruments, which don't really have an inherent combat capability, but support social interaction. It's emboldened us to keep going on that angle where possible. And it's not to do it at the expense of the core experience, which is going to remain PvPvE, where it is meant to be a blend. But giving people more tools to make choices about how they approach those situations is super enticing to us.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

When I think about future updates, it's things like new maps, weapons, Arc, objectives. After Cold Snap, what's your current focus, and what cadence are you hoping for with new things?

Right now, it's us deciding exactly that cadence, and you are correct on the types of content. We're going to parcel that out across the coming year. Some of it is reacting to the things you're talking about [in this interview], like how players are actually engaging with the game. But a lot of it is trying to see how we can move the experience forward. Of course, adding a new map has its own novelty. But what else? Thematically, gameplay-wise, how do the enemies, and the items, and the experiences in that map all point towards something? It's getting that thematically cohesive stuff together that feels like, 'Oh, guys, the Whatever Update just came out for Arc Raiders. Let's go check that out.' That's what we're trying to template out for the coming months.

On new Arc, there's a loop with the Queen and Matriarch where you kill the big Arc to get legendary guns to kill big Arc. Are you happy with the fun factor and the reward with them?

I think we are pretty happy with what they are now, but I don't think we can subsist forever on that. I think eventually, if we introduce yet another six-legged, giant, spidery robot, it's kind of like, 'Okay, we got it.' So yeah, I think it's looking toward where we take those types of experiences in the future to something else, or something additional – seeing how we can escalate the experience for the player on the PvE side.

Especially because we've seen – as players get more advanced with the game, more sophisticated in their approach, or they just understand how to play better – the current set of drones becomes much less of a threat to them. They've figured out their attack patterns and how to avoid them, or how to deal with them quickly. Continuing to escalate that is where we're looking at growing next.

We don't do anything like skill-based matchmaking or gear-based matchmaking.

Virgil Watkins

When we think about new Arcs, a lot of people jump to: what sits above a Queen and a Matriarch? How big can we make this thing without breaking?

Yeah, exactly. That is the challenge. We want to go wherever's practical for us, or wherever feels fun, but then you start running into the practical side of, will this blow up the server? Can it even support these kinds of things? Our ambitions are definitely large, and I'm not going to say that you're going to meet one anytime soon, but obviously you see the giant walking Arcs in the background. That's what we're trying to show some contrast with as we go forward.

It sounds like you've also got an eye on the everyday harassers on the level of the Shredder. The drone that's going to kill you more often because you see it more often.

Yeah, we're looking at things like – we use the term variants – but it's like, what does this look like with an adjustment to its attack pattern, or weapon loadout, or armor? We can create distinct gameplay changes while using the platforms we have, but we're trying to avoid people just being like, 'Oh, they painted the Wasp blue, and here it is.' So we want to be a little careful about that. Not to say that simple variants don't have their place, but we want to make sure that they are actually serving a purpose in the ecosystem we have.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

On the balance of PvP and PvE, we've recently learned more about the aggression component of matchmaking. Do you have any concerns of people trying to game that in some way, or is just that part of trying to play your way?

I think it's part of the experience. It's a bit of a misnomer calling it aggression-based, and it is something that we're going to keep tuning, but people aren't far off in how they think it works. At present, I think we're kind of okay with the fact that you have some agency over the situation. If you really want to try to adjust and play in a bit of a less hostile environment, you are afforded [a way] to do so. But it should be clear to people, I hope, that it's also not binary. Obviously you can tell it's weighted one way or the other, but it's never like, 'You are now only with PvE players, you are now only with PvP players.' It's a weighted system. There's a lot of layers to it, so it's not quite so A/B as people might assume. And we don't do anything like skill-based matchmaking or gear-based matchmaking.

It's really just this rating system we have, and we're just going to keep monitoring match health and player response, and tune it from there

I assume you have to track who shoots first, otherwise it's just flagging everyone, and we'd approach some PvP singularity.

That's a good point to raise, because we can track who shoots first, and who takes damage, and who [does] whatever. But the one thing the system does not do is attempt to assume intent. If I'm a very bad player and you're a good player, and I'm the aggressor, and I just miss all my shots and you defend yourself, the game doesn't know what the intent was. They just saw you kill me because I'm terrible.

So we don't make any value or moral judgments. It's not the game judging you for your actions. It's purely, 'are you engaging in PvP at all?' [Data is] a bit of a blunt instrument, which is why we're continuing to add and tune what we do with it.

It sounds self-correcting. If you don't want to engage with PvP, you naturally won't, and you'll naturally be put with people less likely to engage in PvP on average.

Yeah. And like I said, it's not complete A/B there. There's other things that go into it.

It feels like an extreme like that could be risky for the game, where it just becomes PvE for some people – but you want the balance.

I think that's where some of the risk is, because we want both elements present. If it is purely PvE, the tension, risk, and danger factor of PvP being there goes away, and the game's not balanced, not built around that, right? That's part of the reason we moved away from it being a PvE game a while ago. And it's not to say that we can't eventually shape that better, but as the game stands today, it's a bit of a risk for us to directly push [PvE].

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

I tend to be the more aggressive one in the trio I play with, and I've told them it feels like PvE is the heart of the game, it's the car. But PvP makes it work, it's the engine.

I think that's a good way to put it, because [PvP] is what adds the spice. As players get more sophisticated and learn the game better – and are better off with their gear and stuff – the threat of PvE goes down quite a lot. We see players who can very capably take down the hardest drones. You need that element. And a lot of the drones, the way the encounters are set up, and the way they're spawned, is in a way that invites the possibility of PvP. Do I make noise? Do I draw attention to this situation? Do I evade this drone? And when you remove the factor of other players capitalizing on that situation or coming to help, that kind of gets rid of some of the ambiguity that we like.

I do want to talk about the Expedition and some economic stuff related to it. Are you happy with the percentage of people taking on the Expedition? Is that an important metric for you?

Yeah, it's an important metric. As said in the initial blog post around it, it is a bit of an experiment, right? Endeavoring to let players choose to do it, rather than the game choosing for them. We had just over a million players do the Expedition in the last cycle, and around 40% or 45% did the full five skill points as well. I don't know how I'd even really measure success with this. Do we see these players continuing to engage with it? Are they starting over and going through the game again as we intend?

Cost should not inherently fill a skill gap or a tactical awareness gap or things like that.

Virgil Watkins

We probably came out a bit late with the 5 million coin requirement on that, but we were deliberately holding back so we could measure that value against where players' actual economies were at. We pinned it around the average player's current wealth, earn rate, things like that, with the intent for the full five skill points to be aspirational. 'Ooh, I'm gonna really try to go for that.' But I think there was a perception that players felt like they were compelled to [do the Expedition], like they needed to do it, which I think invited a lot of the, 'I'm only gonna use my worst guns or free run.' So I think it created a bit of a dark pattern for some players feeling like they shouldn't play as intended.

But yeah, this system will change. We're not precious about it. We'll keep adjusting to make sure it is properly incentivizing players. We still have to be very careful about the rewards and the mechanics involved, not giving you a very direct advantage over someone who's just starting the game, or hasn't done as many as you. That's the space we still want to stay in.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

The 5 million bar is interesting, as you said, in context of discussion of the play patterns it encourages. Are you considering a different amount, or a metric outside stash value?

We're actively looking at that now. In fact, the reason we chose that mechanic is it's what we had time to do up to launch. So, looking at different things to hook into that system, or different criteria for that part, is something we're actively evaluating. And we'll probably talk about that a little later once we have our ducks in a row.

A big draw with the Expedition is the skill points and how they compound over time. But some player testing has found that several skills are kind of underwhelming. Are you looking to buff weaker skills?

It's 100% on our radar. I think even internally, we know. There's certain skills I don't choose. So yeah, 100%. I'm not going to pretend there aren't some [skills] on there that need some work. That'll be something that changes again. I won't say when or in what nature, but we're not deaf to the state of it.

Can you share any examples of skills in the crosshair, or ones you avoid?

Speaking for myself, maybe someone out there will disagree, but the ones that are centered around melee hits on certain things, like taking [Arc] out in one shot and stuff like that. If I recall, back when we were starting to build a skill tree, the way the melee system was then and the way certain things would play out – that was a little more practical. But then, once you see how people are actually engaging with the game, and the distances at which they prefer to take on stuff, those kind of fell by the wayside a little bit.

There's other [skills], of course, we can look at adjusting. Like some of the ones that, even if you invest the full five skill points in them, still don't have a very clear impact on how you actually play moment to moment. Yeah, we can see about what we do with those.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

Is there a danger of making skills too good, assuming some players might have, say, 20 extra skill points from Expeditions?

Precisely. That is the danger there, and that's why skill points come right up to that line of, 'Do I have a clear advantage over another player?' So we'd have to be quite deliberate. The current intent is skill points will not be the reward forever with Expeditions, it will cap out at some point to whatever kind of makes sense.

The intent is, if you've done enough Expeditions to have, say, the full amount of extra skill points available to you, you've got maybe a couple of slight quality-of-life changes, like, 'I can have that little extra stamina and still do Security Breach and maybe move quieter,' or whatever the constellation of those points you've allocated is.

In a similar space of making certain things more appealing, I want to talk about guns. There's a perception that rare and epic guns are expensive to use and upgrade, and make you question how much better they really are. Are you looking at those weapons, either making them cheaper to upgrade, or stronger to justify the cost?

Oh, 100%, yeah. A lot of the original intent, and I think this intent is good, is that any given weapon, in capable hands, should be capable of winning a fight if you're playing smartly. And I think that has to remain true. But I think we're definitely a bit off on some of the cost-to-benefit ratios, certainly on those higher weapons.

It was trying to follow a curve of, by spending more and more money, you're gaining an edge. Not a clear one, like, 'I'm using a purple weapon, therefore I win this fight, period.' We don't want that. Cost should not inherently fill a skill gap, or a tactical awareness gap.

We do want people to be excited to get a Tempest or a Bobcat. So if we're way under-shooting how people feel about that, then that'll take some adjustment.

It is interesting, though. This is where the data side is fun when compared to the sentiment. The Bettina is a good example. We did an adjustment to it, but even before the adjustment, it had the highest PvE damage output of any weapon. It could shred drones very effectively, and then when we tuned it, that only got better.

But that's where perception versus practical reality comes in, and then, how do we navigate that?

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

Do you think we'd see guns go up or down in rarity, or just adjust the recipe for upgrading?

It could be both. If it comes to pass that, as an example I'm making up right now, we like the nature of what the Bobcat is, but it's performing at this bracket, then we can consider moving it up or down and, later on, filling that niche with a different weapon.

I don't think we're precious about where they sit on that spectrum. So if it makes sense to buff it to live up to that implied potential, or if it makes sense to drop the rarity so it stays where it is because it's performing that role well, then we'll do that.

In my notes for this interview, one word is written in all capital letters: springs. Are you looking at bottlenecks for recipes or loot sources to lessen the feeling of having one thing you're always out of?

Yeah, we keep a very close eye on that. We have this really crazy sheet that keeps track of the exact ratio of every possible moment in an item's lifespan. Was it seen? Was it picked up? Was it dropped? Literally every minutia down to what happens with it.

I think one thing that's interesting with those is, with springs in particular, there's quite a few sources of them that not everyone latches onto. There's quite a few recyclables that are good to get springs out of. It's a little bit limited, but Celeste provides them for seeds. It just depends on your consumption rate. If you're a really active player, I imagine you can still chew through those pretty fast.

I think springs are marked as mechanical loot, if I'm not mistaken. So in the mechanical areas of the game, are we not maybe providing quite enough of that resource? Or do we need to up the number of containers that are active in a mechanical area to better fill that need?

I remain curious about that data. Talk to me about the least-loved items in the game.

Offhand, there's some trinkets people just don't care about, faded photographs and things like that. They'll go after the big-ticket trinkets, like Lance's mixtape and a few of the other ones that are used for other purposes.

People definitely still don't quite like the Rattler, even though it's one of my favorite guns. They will break that thing down in an instant for parts, for sure. And then the Hairpin is another one. I think that's a very niche weapon. I still quite like what it does for what it is, but you know, it's certainly an acquired taste.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

What does it do? I'm not sure I could tell you.

Well, it's very quiet, right? But it's slow. If you're stealthy enough, you can stay hidden with it. I use it a lot of times, actually, to quietly take out the smaller drones, because if you land your shots well, you can knock off the thrusters very quickly. And it has, relatively speaking, quite high headshot damage. So if you can keep your shots on target, you can take down players pretty fast if you use it in an advantageous situation. You're probably not going to win a standing fight with somebody, but if you pick your moment, it can be pretty effective. And when you upgrade it all the way, it does cycle pretty fast, so you can land repeat shots if you're good.

In defense of the Hairpin.

Eh, mild advocation, I would say.

There's been endless debate about guns like the Stitcher or Kettle. Are they too strong? As you said, weapons need to feel lethal. What's your stance on how good the lowest-rarity guns can be, and the capability of a free loadout with them?

Actually, we've been talking about this quite a lot, even today. When we look at the data, the economic outcomes for a free loadout in terms of how much you are profiting relative to a player who is using their own kit, it's so marginally better, and that's because you're risking nothing by coming in. That kit is worth between 4,000 and 5000 coins. So their economic outcomes, while there is a measurable improvement with them, they're not over performing relative to bringing your own stuff.

I think what happens a little bit is: players are emboldened by the fact that, 'I'm not risking things, so I'm going to be riskier about it.' I see where some of the sentiment comes from, because these players play like kamikazes and are very reckless, and all it really takes is for them to win that one fight, and now they've got your kit, and they're running around with that. So I think we're pretty okay on the economic side.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

I think it's the other aspects of it that we're going to look at adjusting a little bit – whether it's exactly what they come with, the number of slots they have in the inventory, or the weight. I think that's probably what we'll play with first before looking at deeper restrictions. And then, adjacent to that, we'll be looking at the weapons that come in those kits and seeing if they require some adjustment. If the Stitcher is way too effective even at level one, sure, we'll adjust that so it fits more appropriately in the perception of what that should do. But again, if you have that free kit and you are playing well or playing intelligently, you should still be able to win that fight.

Free kits feel important as a no-risk way to try something. Is there an elegant solution to the complaint of, 'They risk nothing, I risk everything'?

I would never ignore the concerns around it. I think they're very real. But that's where it becomes a little hard to parse personal anecdotes versus what we can see.

If you came fully loaded and ended up in a situation where a guy with 30 light bullets managed to take you down, what led to that situation? Taking a look at those things in isolation can be tricky, versus looking at them in aggregate, but it's absolutely on our radar and we're going to keep looking at it.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

Something that comes up in discussions of free loadouts is late joining. That feels important so raids don't empty out quickly, but it can suck to have no time for a specific objective. Are you looking at ways to cut down on frustrations there?

That's also another topic we've been discussing a lot, and it's another one of those interesting things of data versus perception. We 100% acknowledge the whole thing of, 'Man, I came in to do that trial and now I clearly don't have enough time to do that, and that sucks, so I'm just going to leave,' or whatever. That aspect is definitely not great.

But similar to the perception of free kits versus what they do, the perception around late joining and what it affords you has been quite interesting. Players are like, 'The loot's all gone,' or whatever else.

But players who late join economically profit way more than people who aren't. The session, when they are fresh, does eventually get quieter, and very often they come across the remnants of fights or can maybe take out bigger drones or hit high-ticket areas more readily than other players. So that's been a very interesting thing to look at.

An auction house or a market is very risky territory.

Virgil Watkins

Part of the original intent with the late join system and the times we chose is partially what you're saying, so that the session isn't dead after the first 10 minutes, and then you're running around by yourself. As well as the amount of loot we spawn, where it's spawned, where the spawn points are, it's all set up in a way that there should be plenty of stuff for players to do.

And the original intent was hopefully having players go, 'Okay, well, my plan A isn't possible. I'm gonna do my plan B or C now instead.' And of course, with things like trials, where that is the only objective, then fine, that's kind of off the table and that really sucks, because that was the time you had set aside for it.

I think trying to do more on that side of things is where I want to look next. Coming in with a dedicated purpose and that's been undercut by the late join is where I'd want to remove the pain point first.

An idea I've seen proposed is high-value raids that you can only join if your loadout is worth a certain amount. Has anything like that been discussed?

Oh, for sure. We've discussed a lot of different criteria for queuing up. And of course, there's other examples out there, like the labs in [Escape from Tarkov] needing a special item to get in.

I think for the moment, we don't want to segment the player base too much. We don't want to put people in situations like, 'Hey, we're trying to play together, but I don't have the criteria to go play with you and now we can't play together.' There's some hesitation to put barriers between players and the content they want to play, or want to make an attempt at. It's not something that's off the table for us, but I think we have to be a little careful in how we do that. I think we have to be a little careful.

I completely get the sentiment. You want to feel like, 'Yeah, I'm coming in loaded, and I know everybody else in there's gonna be loaded.' And let's have that moment for us, rather than this dude with a Stitcher dropping from the ceiling randomly on us.

Sort of a high ante table.

Yeah, a little bit.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

Sometimes the worst part is making a new loadout with 100 clicks in 15 menus. I might do a free run just because I can't be asked. Are you looking to cut down on that time?

We're super aware of it. Similar to things like the Expedition, a lot of it was just developers and time available up to launch. Now it's just really feeling out how we can prioritize it against other known things we need to do, or swapping priorities of something we were going to do with this based on what's feasible.

I've literally done the same thing, where I'm like, 'I'm just gonna go free this time, guys, let's just go and get in there and do stuff.' It's completely acknowledged.

Do you think we'll see saved loadouts, where I register that I want this gun, this bag, these consumables, and it crafts it for me?

I won't speak for our UI/UX team on that, but I think that's a completely valuable thing, where it just attempts to do its best job to fulfill your request with your loadout. It's like, 'Well, you're short on this resource and that resource, here's what you get,' that type of thing.

We've already done what we can to get the matchmaking and stuff as fast as possible. So if we can, not to say keep you out of the front end, but get you through the front end faster, I think that's a great ambition too. Because you're like, let's get back in there. And you know, there's points in games where friction is good, and spending time is good, and making you be attentive is good. Looking through a bunch of menus isn't necessarily it.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

Are there specific things that, looking back, you really wish you could've had ready for launch?

There are some aspects of map conditions and world activities that we have worked on, some of the stuff like you saw in Cold Snap, where it has environmental effects on the player. Some of the ways in which players interact with things. The harvester is an example of sort of a puzzle. There's more of those things that we really wanted to do, and are now continuing to roll out, and will roll out as part of updates. That, I think, would have been nicer to have more fleshed out, more variety available from the jump, and to have had more time to dedicate to those toward launch.

Patrick Söderlund recently mentioned leaning more into player trading. Are we talking about a full trade system, an auction house type of thing?

I think that's more an expression of what someone finds fun than intent. We're not building an auction house or anything like that. Currently, I think it's more leaning into the aspect of social facilitation in that sense of our design.

One thing we really wanted to do, and may still try to do, is: it's fine to trade by just dropping something on the floor, and you can pick it up, but we really want to do an offer where you hold it out and someone actually interacts with the thing in your hand to take it from you. It's kind of a small thing, but it feels a lot better than, 'Here's your thing I threw on the floor for you.' So I think it's things on those ends.

An auction house or a market is very risky territory. We put a lot of very, very deliberate effort into making the game about the items. We previously explored and even partially built a trading system like that. But what it ended up doing is it turned the game into just being about coins. Going in and finding items that are worth the most value, changing them in [for coins], and just buying the things you want. Now you have very little care about going in, exploring the correct location, and searching the right containers, or feeling cool that, 'Oh, finally, I needed this thing, and now I can go do the other thing I wanted to do with it.'

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

Coming to the end of our time, what's your advice on gear fear for people letting their best stuff dry age in the stash?

I think it'll come down to the type of player you are, or how much time you have to spend. We've tried to make it in such a way that getting that gear again shouldn't be too onerous, and it's far preferable to have fun with it while you can then just let it sit there. I played DayZ back in the day, I played Tarkov, and it took me a long time to get over that gear fear. I'd go hide my best snipers in the woods. And after a while, I just went, 'You know, the joy was obtaining it, getting to use it, and then either giving it away or dying, and then doing that loop again.' So I think it's that there's a lot of fun to be had going through that growth cycle. 'I have nothing, I got some stuff, I used that stuff, I lost that stuff, I start over.' Just enjoy the spectacle and the interactions you can create with the stuff you have. I think it's more interesting than letting it sit there and admiring it on your wall.

Are people correct that some details, like speakers or tumbleweeds, are deliberately designed to look like raiders or Arc?

As far as I'm aware, it's complete happenstance. I saw, even earlier today, someone's like, 'From this angle, those stadium lights kind of look like the Rocketeers.' Those lights were made in, like, 2020 and the Rocketeer we have today was made far more recently than that. I don't believe anyone deliberately made the silhouettes the same. And I still get spooked by the tumbleweed just because you're looking for fast motion that's approximately such and such size. I don't believe anyone did it deliberately, but I wouldn't put it past them, either.

You have all the data. What's your response to the common sentiment that loot rooms with key cards are underwhelming?

We've tried to calibrate it so that we have a spectrum of rarity on the keys. It goes from green up to purple. That creates a value spectrum, and that's based around the total value of the room, but sometimes that's concentrated in a few very high-ticket things, or it's in a lot of medium to small things. As far as we can see, it is spawning the correct stuff. I think it's just what players might want out of there, and then maybe there's more calls for some determinism, like, 'Ooh, that's the one that spawns X or Y. That's why we should go there, and that's why I really feel cool about having this key.' I think it's a little bit more of that aspect that we need to shape up.

If there's some that are undercooked, and there definitely has been – we've done some loot adjustments in previous patches. I think a couple of the Stella Montis breach rooms and key rooms were a bit under what they should have been. Sometimes it just isn't where we'd like it. So we'll pull that up.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

You've raised perhaps the most important question of this interview. Internally, do you call epics pink or purple?

That depends who you ask. I think, technically, it's pink. I'm not sure. It does also depend on your color blindness settings.

And do you think we'll see legendary guns meant for PvP?

I think that's completely possible. But with what I mentioned before, the way guns are relative to each other, that's where we have to be quite careful, and that's why we deliberately did things like that with the Hullcracker and the Equalizer. I'm very staunchly going to stick to: there should never be a one-shot situation if you're wearing a shield and have full health. I think that gameplay is deeply boring, to just be deleted in an instant, in our type of game. If we were to do something that is substantially stronger in PvP, it needs to come with the appropriate price tag, running costs, risk. I'm not in any way against players having that spike in power and feeling very cool for a moment. But it can't be like, I unlocked this thing and now I just win fights. We saw this a little bit in Tech Test 2. The heavy shield was way overtuned. So you put on a heavy shield and, 'Oh darn, I'm slow, but I win my next 10 fights pretty handily.' So that's where things like that can overshoot.

More info here: "There are going to be multiple maps coming this year": Arc Raiders dev teases 2026 roadmap, and maybe some new maps "even grander than what we've got now."

CATEGORIES PS5 Xbox Series X PC Gaming Platforms PlayStation Xbox Austin WoodSocial Links NavigationSenior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.

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