Arc Raiders Faces Endgame Crisis, Embark Studios Prepares Gradual Solutions

The extraction shooter Arc Raiders is now facing its toughest test: keeping its shrinking player population. Data from SteamDB shows the current daily average is only around 25,000, a steep drop from its heyday when it peaked at more than 480,000 concurrent players. The decline is not without cause, and one of the factors most often complained about by the community is the lack of activities to do once players have completed most of the core content.

Until now, players who have reached a high level can only repeat fights against the Queen and the Matriarch—two giant bosses that demand rare weaponry and solid team coordination. Once the strategies are mastered and squads are formed, there is no longer enough new challenge. The other option is to engage in player-versus-player (PvP) combat, but an aggression-based matchmaking system has made lobbies unfriendly, compounded by a surge in cheating reports. As a result, many players have moved to other titles, and the Arc Raiders endgame ecosystem has stalled.

Responding to those complaints, Aleksander Grøndal, executive producer at Embark Studios, said his team is aware of the problem. In an interview ahead of the Frozen Trail update's launch, he explained that the update will introduce a series of new repeatable activities, offering challenges in a different way. "Frozen Trail will bring some new things to do, activities that are repeatable and challenge players in a completely new way," he said. However, he stressed that this is a long-term initiative, not an instant fix.

Grøndal also highlighted that some players feel the rewards from PvP mode are inadequate. "They don't really feel like there's enough reward to play PvP beyond just doing the PvP itself. So our goal going forward is to address that more specifically," he explained. He added that player needs vary, so a uniform solution is not the right approach. "Based on different player needs, we need to have different solutions as well. A one-size-fits-all solution might not be the right approach here."

Frozen Trail is indeed not the final answer. Grøndal called the update "going to take a step in that direction" and said the team has "a bigger long-term plan." He also clarified that the plan is not limited to the next major update coming about six months after Frozen Trail, because smaller updates will also bring gradual improvements.

For the global game industry, the Arc Raiders case is a mirror of how games as a service must keep player engagement alive after release. In Indonesia, where the PC and console player base continues to grow, this dynamic is also felt. Local communities often complain about slow content cycles in popular titles, and they tend to move to other games if there is no meaningful update. The arrival of a major update like Frozen Trail could determine whether Arc Raiders can hold its market share in the country, especially amid fierce competition with other competitive games that offer seasonal content on a regular basis.

Going forward, the biggest challenge for Embark Studios is to prove that it is not merely patching shortcomings, but truly understanding the diverse preferences of players. Will the promised smaller updates be enough to slow the player decline, or will they instead signal that the game needs a fundamental overhaul of its endgame design? Only time will tell, but one thing is certain: the community is waiting for real proof, not just promises.