ARC Raiders: DICE alumni’s coop TPS becomes a “PvPvE survival extraction shooter”

Officially unveiled in 2021, ARC Raiders made quite an impression when it was announced. This free TPS developed by Embark, a studio founded in particular by former developers at DICE, was initially due to be released in 2022, but was postponed to 2023 without further details. After long months under the radar, the title is now giving its news.

ARC Raiders change course

Aleksander Grøndal, Executive Producer of ARC Raiders, recalls that the teams made the decision in 2022 to prioritize the development of The Finals, Embark Studios’ other free-to-play shooter, and explains that in the meantime ARC Raiders has evolved.

Initially described as a coop shooter, the game will eventually integrate PvP and take the path of a “PvPvE survival extraction shooter” which will oppose AI and human players on the battlefield.

Last spring, we made the decision to move the release of ARC Raiders to focus on releasing THE FINALS, our team-based first-person shooter, as the first game. At the time, we had also indicated that we are giving the ARC Raiders team time to add PvP to the existing base of the game.

Since then, over development, ARC Raiders has taken the form of what we think is a really promising PvPvE survival extraction shooter – a game that stays true to the ARC Raiders universe and which we have a lot of fun testing in internal.

In the blog post that you can find at
this addresswe learn a little more about the lore of the game and the situations that players will encounter during the game:

When you see another Raider being chased by a swarm of ARC drones, will you kill them? Do you give him a hand? Or do you hold back and feast on the precious leftovers?

A closed alpha is coming this summer

In order to continue the development of the game and to validate certain points of its structure, the studio announces that a closed Alpha will take place this summer:

The next step for us is a closed Alpha test to get feedback on the game’s systems and loops. This will be the first test of ARC Raiders and a milestone for the game, which so far has never been in the hands of external players.

This test will be closed and under NDA, as work on the game continues and we are not ready to reveal everything about it yet. We have work to do and theories to prove before putting them on the world stage.

If you want to try the game before its release and help the teams adjust its various characteristics, you can register now on the title’s Steam page. If this alpha is only available on PC, remember that the final game will also be released on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, the GeForceNOW cloud gaming service as well as on Xbox Series X|S and PS5.

> Register for the ARC Raiders Closed Alpha