When Embark said it would take several months to deliver the main Arc Raiders the intended update, days like today were probably the goal. The pull shooter once again tops the Steam charts for best-selling and most-played games.
Among bestsellers, Arc Raiders currently ranks fifth, behind this week’s other big releases, Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Gears of War: E-Day, but those came out earlier this week, and it’s still early, so we could see it surpass those before the week is out. Its new cosmetic DLC, the Frozen Trail Collector’s Set, is also selling very well. It currently occupies the 8th place on the bestseller list.
When it comes to concurrent players, Arc Raiders eclipsed triple digits on Steam, something it hasn’t done since May. He sits at 106,000 – good for 12th on the list – and has actually gained 5,000 more players since I started writing this. Much like the sales boom, it seems likely that it will continue to climb throughout the day.
It’s no coincidence that May was the time when Embark announced it would move to a biannual cadence for major updatesToday’s Frozen Trail being the first such update since this change. Embark felt it needed more time to deliver larger updates to players while giving developers leeway for a healthier working environment.
I have been fascinated by this bold gesture as it is rarely seen in the world of extremely popular live gaming. The Arc Raiders never really disappeared completely; it still averaged 40,000 concurrent Steam players in September, but it averaged close to half a million last holiday season, so the fall was precipitous, even though those numbers will likely never be sustained.
The first day after the update can’t tell the whole story as to whether this revised roadmap pays off for Embark, but it’s clearly a good start.
Arc Raiders will be free this weekend on all its available platforms.
Gn tech
