Almost half of all ARC Raiders rounds played during October’s PvE test ran on the new PvE servers, Embark Studios executive producer Aleksander Grøndal has revealed. Speaking with CEO Patrick Söderlund in a full interview with The Game Business published on November 3, the pair also explained why Embark stopped monthly content drops this year and why it is still building new games.
The interview gives the clearest look yet at how Embark is thinking about a permanent PvE option, which the studio has not yet decided on.
ARC machines like the Bully, added in Frozen Trail, are the 'environment' half of PvPvE and the main threat left on PvE servers. Image: Embark Studios
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What Embark said about the ARC Raiders PvE test
The PvE toggle ran from October 13 to 20 (11:00 CEST both days), according to Embark’s Steam announcement. PvE servers had zero player-to-player damage and lower overall loot value, and some major map conditions, including Night Raid, Hidden Bunker and Frigate, had no PvE option. When the test ended, Embark said it would send a survey to a representative sample of players from October 22.
“We’re going through that data right now,” Grøndal told The Game Business. “There was a huge amount of interest in it, and there were a lot of players who tried it out, and almost 50% of the rounds that were played during the test were on the PvE server.”
He added that the results cut both ways: “Some people who said, ‘Hey, I want PvE,’ changed their mind. They didn’t want it because it was lacking some of the values that the product had. And then you had players who absolutely loved it.”
Söderlund said the delay was never about difficulty. “We could just frankly add PvE,” he said. “It’s not a difficult thing to do.” Embark’s worry was that removing PvP would disturb the tension at the core of the game. “We’ve now since tried it and realized that it’s fine. Maybe people can choose what they like.” Grøndal’s caveat: any solution must not come “at the expense of the integrity of the experience itself.”
Why Embark pulled the handbrake on monthly updates
Embark moved from monthly drops to two major updates a year in May, as PC Gamer reported at the time. The new interview explains the reasoning behind it.
Söderlund said the game had “like 80% day-one retention,” and that players were “kind of done with what we had given them” at about 100 hours. Grøndal said the team had front-loaded so much into the launch season that it “didn’t really have that much lined up for January and February.”
“The decision that was made was to slow down, to go back to the drawing board, and to stop monthly drops,” Söderlund said. “We realized that would have an impact on our sales numbers and on engagement.” Pausing while on top meant saying “slow down. Pull the handbrake,” when the instinct was to push harder. The Game Business says Söderlund had to “digest” the team’s proposal but is now confident in it after the Frozen Trail update, which Embark called “our biggest update since launch” when it arrived on October 8. “We managed to get a lot of players back,” Grøndal said.
Raider-versus-raider fights like this were switched off on the PvE servers, which hosted almost 50% of rounds during the test. Image: Embark Studios
Cheating and new games
- Cheating: Grøndal said Embark uses machine learning and third-party tools to detect cheaters and is “on a good path,” but doubts it is fully solvable: “it’s costing us a lot of money.”
- New projects: Asked whether Embark is still putting resources into future games alongside ARC Raiders and THE FINALS, Söderlund said: “We are and we have to,” adding that the studio does not “want to just be a live-service studio.”
What it means for players
An almost even split of rounds is a strong signal that PvE players are not a small niche, and Söderlund’s “it’s fine” suggests Embark’s main fear about the mode has eased. Still, nothing is confirmed: no date, no format, and no word on whether PvE would be permanent or rotating. ARC Raiders remains a big seller: publisher Nexon put it above 16.3 million copies sold by the end of June, GamesBeat reported.
The interview arrived on the same day as Embark’s own developer video explaining its AI-generated voice lines, which we covered on our November 3 live page. If you’re playing now, our ARC Raiders Dead Flowers and Rock Salt guide covers the current Soul’s Offering project, and Embark’s other live game gets the same treatment in our THE FINALS PRIME TIME guide.
What’s next
Embark has not said when it will share its PvE decision. For now, ARC Raiders is on a schedule of weekly store updates and fixes every three weeks, the studio said in its November 3 update notes.
Sources: The Game Business (Christopher Dring), ARC Raiders on Steam (Embark Studios), PC Gamer, GamesBeat, Rock Paper Shotgun.
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Featured image: Embark Studios
