25 November 2025

‘It Didn’t Work’ ARC Raiders Devs Explain The Shift Away From Pure PvE

By newsgame

ARC Raiders wasn’t always planned to be a PvPvE extraction shooter, according to a recent behind-the-scenes video documenting the game’s development process. The PvP element that has become somewhat controversial among ARC Raiders players wasn’t added until far later into development, creating a noticeable shift away from Embark’s original PvE vision for the game.

The fundamental gameplay loop of ARC Raiders is to battle ARC enemies and scavenge for loot, with the ever-present threat of encountering another hostile player keeping the moment-to-moment gameplay tense. With players losing their inventory upon death, ARC Raiders makes venturing out into its world a gamble that requires strategy and skill to survive. Some ARC Raiders players believe the game would benefit from a PvE-only mode, but the developers have recently revealed why that would be to the overall game’s detriment.

ARC Raiders Added PvP After Realizing a PvE-Only Game Wouldn’t Work

The official ARC Raiders YouTube channel has posted the first episode in a docuseries highlighting the game’s development. In this video, members of the ARC Raiders dev team detail the choice to add PvP gameplay deep into the game’s development cycle after coming to the conclusion that PvE wouldn’t provide a sustainable gameplay loop.

Originally, ARC Raiders was going to be a co-op PvE game, where players would be able to traverse a vast open world and utilize a powerful jumping mechanic to leap onto towering mechanical enemies. After hosting a closed beta test that featured this planned gameplay loop, the development team realized that there was a limit to what this game could offer players, and player interest likely wouldn’t last long after one or two play sessions. In regards to the pure PvE gameplay of this original version, ARC Raiders Creative Director Stefan Strandberg bluntly states that “it didn’t work. The larger recipe for the game wasn’t there.”

It didn’t work. The larger recipe for the game wasn’t there.

PvP Was a Large Departure from ARC Raiders’ Original Pitch

While initial feedback for ARC Raiders‘ PvE mode was mostly positive, the dev team could see that there was something missing that would impact player retention in the long run. ARC Raiders was planned to be a free-to-play game at first, but ultimately ended up costing a premium price. Strandberg notes that the studio “couldn’t replicate the sessions consistently enough” in terms of ensuring that players could have a fulfilling experience each time they dropped into a session. Coupled with the free-to-play aspect, Embark was worried that ARC Raiders players wouldn’t be engaging enough to retain the necessary player base to succeed.

The move to add PvP was a controversial one, even for the ARC Raiders development team, with Embark’s Founder and CEO Patrick Soderlund even admitting that “a lot of people, and frankly, me included, wanted this to be a PvE game.” However, the team’s belief in the lore of ARC Raiders and its gameplay loop led them to ultimately build upon the work already done and incorporate PvP in a natural way.

Embark Studio’s other PvP-centric title, The Finals, shifted to the forefront of development, giving the ARC Raiders team time to fine-tune how the game’s PvPvE gameplay would work.

ARC Raiders players want more loot spawn variety.

ARC Raiders’ PvP Mechanics Keep Gameplay Interesting

One reason the team at Embark gives for including PvP in the final version of ARC Raiders is its ability to create emergent gameplay situations and keep matches feeling fresh. As ARC Raiders Executive Producer Aleksander Grondal describes his experience exploring the game’s world, “I want this to be more than just a static backdrop where I’m fighting robots.” This thinking led to the decision to incorporate PvP and extraction elements to give players a reason to explore the maps of ARC Raiders, and the ever-present threat of other players alongside ARC machines made this exploration tense and thrilling.

The choice to incorporate PvP and redirect ARC Raiders to be an extraction shooter allowed the team to keep the world, lore, and large-scale fights against giant machines that they had built for the original pitch. However, it also injected the game with a layer of unpredictability that proved to be the missing key that unlocked the addictive gameplay loop that ARC Raiders players have come to enjoy.