Raiders!
I’m Aleksander Gröndal, the executive producer on ARC Raiders!
In case you missed it, we just announced some news about ARC Raiders at the Gamescom Opening Night Live show in Cologne (where I’m at right now).
Let’s get into it.
First things first, ARC Raiders will launch in 2025 here on Steam, as well as on the Epic Game Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and on cloud streaming via Nvidia GeForce Now.
There will be opportunities for you to experience the game earlier than that. In around two months from now, between October 24 and October 27, we’re planning a first public Tech Test here on Steam. For an opportunity to play, make sure to sign up for Playtesting on our Steam store page. For this test, we will select participants randomly from our pool of playtesters.
We’re also making an important change to our business model.
You may recall that ARC Raiders was announced as a free-to-play game. Today, we announced that ARC Raiders will be released as a $40 premium title. There are many reasons for this change, and they all boil down to our conviction that a premium business model is a better fit for the type of game we’re building. A premium model allows us to create a more focused, balanced, and engaging action-survival experience.
We also released a teaser, that you can watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8NN00Wtj5c
I know it’s been some time since we talked about ARC Raiders, so here’s a refresher:
In ARC Raiders you enter a vast and lethal world.
People have fled to the underground colony of Speranza, seeking supplies to survive, and shelter from ARC machines on the surface. Demand for resources is at an all-time high, but venturing the surface to get them is a risky job.
You’re a newly enlisted as a Raider, fighting for your own survival and that of your neighborhood in the underground colony — scavenging and hunting for resources that must be extracted back safely from the surface. Standing in your way are ARC machines — a mysterious, deadly foe — as well as other players — Raiders — who are also competing for loot and their own survival.
To grow as a Raider, you must make it back down to the colony alive. There, you get to meet the traders of Speranza to trade your loot and valuables, embark on quests, upgrade and improve and expand your chambers, and grow your character to suit your playstyle — to become the Raider that you want to be.
Whether teaming up or going solo, it’s a game that rewards thinking ahead and carefully observing the world around you, rather than running into action guns blazing. The gameplay is tactile, visceral, and grounded, with a rich and playful sandbox of gadgets and tools, beyond just guns and ammo.
While ARC Raiders has changed and evolved over the course of development, the world we have built has always been our anchor. To cite Stefan Strandberg, our creative director, we’re drawing inspiration from current-day themes taken to their extreme — like the prospect of colonizing space, at a time when the relationship between man and machine is becoming increasingly fraught.
It’s a game that takes place in a post-post apocalypse — a distant future where humanity has moved on to build anew. Surely, this world can be a dangerous and treacherous place — but at the same time, it’s inherently hopeful, vibrant, and charming.
With the first Tech Test coming up in October, you should stay tuned for the latest updates and information on ARC Raiders here on Steam, via Embark’s Discord, arcraiders.com, Twitter / X, and YouTube.
With that, I hope to see you in the Rust Belt.