Arc Raiders: The Game That Dares to Go Up Against Battlefield and Call of Duty

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
Embark Studios is launching its extraction shooter Arc Raiders directly against major industry titles Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, positioning it as the start of a long-term service journey.
02
Arc Raiders underwent a significant pivot from its original 2021 concept as a co-operative AI-driven game to an extraction shooter after internal playtesting revealed the initial design was not fun to play.
03
Following an initial surge of over 20 million downloads, Embark’s first title, The Finals, experienced a rapid decline in player retention in early 2024 due to issues with content depth, onboarding, and UI.
04
Embark stabilized The Finals through a six-month recovery period that involved iterative testing and data-driven adjustments, resulting in a current state of profitability and steady growth.
05
The studio of approximately 300 employees maintains high operational efficiency by utilizing proprietary tools, AI, and machine learning to automate tedious development tasks, allowing for weekly updates across multiple live-service projects.
06
Embark aims to differentiate itself by building games with a cost structure significantly lower than the hundreds of millions of dollars typically required for similar AAA titles at larger publishers.

Summary

Embark Studios, founded in 2018 by former EA executive Patrick Soderlund, is navigating the competitive landscape of the shooter genre with the upcoming release of its extraction shooter, Arc Raiders. Despite the daunting challenge of launching between major industry titles like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, the game has generated significant momentum, currently ranking as the third most wishlisted title on Steam. A recent technical test for the game attracted 190,000 players, signaling strong organic interest in the project.

The development of Arc Raiders reflects a pivot in strategy following an honest internal assessment that the initial iteration of the game lacked engagement. By transitioning the project into an extraction shooter, the team aimed to create a more accessible and refined experience within a traditionally niche sub-genre. This approach draws on lessons learned from the studio’s 2023 release, The Finals. Although The Finals initially saw rapid player attrition after a successful launch, the studio utilized data-driven adjustments and consistent content updates to stabilize the game, which is now profitable and maintains a steady growth trajectory.

A core component of Embark’s operational philosophy is the pursuit of extreme development efficiency. By investing in bespoke tools, procedural generation, and machine learning, the studio of approximately 300 employees manages multiple large-scale projects simultaneously. This focus on automation allows the team to reduce development costs and timelines compared to traditional industry standards. Rather than scaling the studio significantly, leadership intends to maintain its current size while establishing new, efficient benchmarks for the broader game industry.