If you’ve picked up Arc Raiders and can’t seem to enjoy it, you’re not alone

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m susceptible to a certain form of gaming hype—a form of hype generated en masse by Arc Raiders, one of 2025’s biggest multiplayer games. Specifically, I was attracted to the community-grown elements of Arc Raider‘s sterling reputation: it never felt like a game shoved down our throats by corporate marketing teams, but organically proliferated by real players, with real experiences to share.

With so many gamers singing Arc Raiders‘ praises (including our own team at GR giving it a perfect score), I was ready to no-life Embark Studios’ ambitious project like everyone else. Hopping into the game for the first time, I remember being captivated by its strong shooting and movement mechanics, as well as its quirky post-apocalypse world, which felt unique despite having shades of Fallout, Mad Max, and the like. Sadly, Arc Raiders lost its luster for me shortly after just a few runs, and Steam tells me I’ve only played about 5 hours of the game. Sure, I’m pretty busy, but that didn’t stop me from putting over 20 hours into Battlefield 6 at launch (or 80 hours in Hades 2, but that’s another story). So, what gives? I feel left out of the Arc Raiders party, and maybe you do too.

Arc Raiders Is Cool, but It Hasn’t Sunk Its Teeth Into Me Yet

The extraction shooter gameplay loop can be boiled down to the following process: go into a hostile zone with other players, collect loot, return to base with loot without getting killed, or else you lose everything. Now, I love difficult games, but the enormously high stakes of the extraction shooter genre have always been a bit too punishing for me. I understand that that’s the point—high risk, high reward, and all—but it’s just not a style of gameplay that I find particularly fun.

There are a lot of possible reasons for this, but one that comes to mind is the skill gap between genre newcomers and veterans. As the old adage goes, “there will always be a sweatier player,” meaning that there will always be a more intense, dedicated shooter in the PvP lobby, ready to cut your run short just as you’re learning the ropes. In other multiplayer shooters, you can just respawn and try again, but in an extraction shooter, death is far more impactful, sometimes resulting in a negation of several hours of work. And that’s probably the main reason I can’t fully enjoy Arc Raiders: it feels like work. Looting and narrowly escaping a session is satisfying, but everything in the lead-up to that feels perfunctory, routine, and bland, all while an unceremonious, devastating loss hangs over your head.

On top of all this, Arc Raiders is a live-service game, designed to be played and developed indefinitely. But I want to play a game with a beginning, middle, and end. I want an experience that I can look back on and smile about. I don’t want a game that feels like clocking into a job and grinding away for resources that could otherwise be bought with real-world money; at its core, the live-service genre is designed to keep luring you back. To this end, live-service games usually aren’t designed with lasting satisfaction in mind.

My experience with Arc Raiders has been an unexpectedly introspective one. I harbor no ill will toward the game, and I actually appreciate many aspects of its world, art design, and moment-to-moment gameplay, but I’ve realized that this kind of “play forever” game just isn’t my cup of tea. It sometimes feels like it should be, since live-service titles never seem to go out of vogue despite gamers the world over declaring the business model dead, but that’s the rub. Maybe someday, I’ll open my eyes to the brilliance of Arc Raiders, but for now, booting it up feels like work.

Released

October 30, 2025

ESRB

Teen / Violence, Blood