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BIZARRE: Arc raiders - What They Never Told You

Marathon sold just 1.2 million copies with nearly 70% on Steam, analyst estimates: "It hasn't exactly made the splash Sony and Bungie wanted"

"Players understand the Arc Raiders loop within 30 minutes, while Marathon's UI acts as a massive filter"

Embark knows Arc Raiders fans are questioning "the size of our weekly patches," but they're not meant to be any bigger: "These updates are focused on smaller quality-of-life improvements"

Embark knows Arc Raiders fans are questioning "the size of our weekly patches," but they're not meant to be any bigger: "These updates are focused on smaller quality-of-life improvements"

Don't expect massive content updates in Arc Raiders' weekly patches

Arc Raiders guns totally changed after one "guerilla" dev at Embark said hold my beer, "I think I can do better," and remade the entire reload system "himself"

Arc Raiders guns totally changed after one "guerilla" dev at Embark said hold my beer, "I think I can do better," and remade the entire reload system "himself"

Another Arc Raiders dev cooked up the Kettle because the game needed a "pressure gun"

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Geoff 'Zag' Keene, design director of Abiotic Factor, has 1,160 hours in PUBG and de-stresses using a Blizzard classic: 'Instead of going to therapy, guys will literally boot up Warcraft 2'

The founder of Deep Field Games talks Arc Raiders, PUBG, and his love of jank in games.

Arc Raiders devs tortured each other during playtests, at one point juicing Arc into unstoppable Elden Ring bosses: "All of a sudden you're playing a Souls game"

That's not very nice

Arc Raiders Steam reviews wobble as players bemoan "very frustrating" meta and say it's "become stale" due to cheating and lack of big updates

Embark's popular shooter is down from a 'very positive' score, for now

Arc Raiders is banning people for using accessibility peripherals, so Embark is "working hard" to resolve the issue "as soon as possible"

A quadriplegic was accidentally perma-banned

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Arc Raiders has a hidden "magic" system: you've never noticed it because you're not supposed to, but it helps Arc do their job

Arc Raiders has a hidden "magic" system: you've never noticed it because you're not supposed to, but it helps Arc do their job

Sometimes Embark lets the Arc cheat a little

Arc Raiders update nerfs notorious Il Toro shotgun from basically every angle: pellet damage, fire rate, dispersion, reload time, and damage falloff

Arc Raiders update nerfs notorious Il Toro shotgun from basically every angle: pellet damage, fire rate, dispersion, reload time, and damage falloff

Arc Raiders dev Embark Studios confirms co-founder is gone after allegations of misconduct with The Finals streamer: "We found the situation unsustainable and mutually agreed to part ways"

Arc Raiders dev Embark Studios confirms co-founder is gone after allegations of misconduct with The Finals streamer: "We found the situation unsustainable and mutually agreed to part ways"

Embark says an external legal investigation "did not substantiate the allegations"

ARC Raiders is substituting AI voices with real actors

ARC Raiders is substituting AI voices with real actors

More voice acting roles for real people in ARC Raiders.

Embark CEO says 'a real professional actor is better than AI' after the studio re-records some Arc Raiders dialog with real humans

Embark CEO says 'a real professional actor is better than AI' after the studio re-records some Arc Raiders dialog with real humans

Embark is not ending its use of generative AI, which it sees "first and foremost as a production tool."

Amidst high profile live service failures, Arc Raiders production director says he hopes other studios are 'given the same chance we had, because it's so hard to put a game out'

Arc Raiders got to reinvent itself. Many other games can't.

Arc Raiders could one day get vehicles, but Embark says no promises: 'We have prototypes from seven years ago'

Arc Raiders could one day get vehicles, but Embark says no promises: 'We have prototypes from seven years ago'

Imagine gunning it across Spaceport on a dirt bike.

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Arc Raiders once had jump pads and the Snap Hook made you 'like Spider-Man' before its extraction shooter pivot: 'It was much more heroic'

Jump pads and unrestrained Snap Hooks didn't stick the landing, but I can't say I don't want to see them return.

Arc Raiders dev uses clip of FPS streamer Shroud summing up "game dev in a nutshell" to reinforce how Embark "failed" during development: "We really did - twice"

Embark went through the wringer to get Arc Raiders out

Arc Raiders' devs didn't expect such a passionate PvE-only crowd

"It's quite challenging because we have these two, quite polar [types of] fans."

The first thing Arc Raiders' devs did during its extraction pivot was to reduce the speed of everything by 60%: 'All the craft that was in the game was kind of background noise'

It was a speedrunner's dream, but it didn't work.

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Arc Raiders devs spent 3 years fighting "on a daily basis" over whether it was "a battle royale," "a hero looter shooter," "a co-op Soul game," or "a co-op Shadow of the Colossus game"

"Internally, we thought the game was deeper, more fun, better than we actually had in our hands"

Arc Raiders received 'substantial negative PvP sentiment' during testing, causing the devs to second-guess its big pivot before realising it was really frustration with weapons and matchmaking

"Should we even have done this reset?"

"A lot of games would be canceled": Arc Raiders lead recalls cutting all but 25 people in "desperation" when Nexon "gave us one more try" to salvage the flailing shooter

"We agreed that this game deserved another try"

No one at Embark could describe Arc Raiders before its extraction shooter pivot, leading to 'playtest battles' of competing directions for the game

"A lot of games would have been cancelled at this point."

The Arc in Arc Raiders have multiple "brains," and they all love pursuing you because Embark gives them "rewards" in real-time via machine learning: "I learned to walk on my own"

The Leaper just wants to say hello

Arc Raiders turns down electromagnetic storm lightning despite some players preferring the chaos, as Embark promises compensation for folks impacted by recent server issues

The studio's decided to make an "exception" for the loot problems

Arc Raiders is handing out loadout refunds for last week's server issues: 'This outage impacted a large number of players, so we are making an exception'

There are two new haircuts, too.

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Patrick Söderlund

Michael Shroud Grzesiek

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