ARC Raiders: what the game is and how it's played

14 August 2026 · 3 min read

GameMapa editorial · how we check facts
Checked: Claude (AI) — fact-checked against the Ukrainian original; not proofread by a native speaker

ARC Raiders is a co-op extraction shooter from the Swedish studio Embark Studios, released on October 30, 2025. It runs on Unreal Engine 5 and is available on PC and current-generation consoles. Everything below is drawn only from what’s confirmed on the official pages of arcraiders.com, Embark Studios, and the Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation storefronts.

Setting and core idea

The game is set on a ruined Earth, in a region the game calls the Rust Belt. The remnants of humanity shelter underground in a settlement called Speranza, while mechanized ARC machines control the surface — hence the game’s name.

• Who the raiders are. Players control raiders — people who leave Speranza and head to the surface for resources, technology, and parts scavenged from ARC machines.
• The core risk. The official description directly contrasts two outcomes of going up top: coming back with a full pack of loot, or going down on the surface and losing everything. That’s the entire point of the game’s loop — not clearing a level, but managing risk.
• Awards and official recognition. The homepage credits the game as a Best Multiplayer winner at the BAFTA Games Awards, the DICE Awards, and The Game Awards 2025.

How the gameplay loop works

ARC Raiders doesn’t have traditional levels or missions in the classic sense. Instead, players gear up in Speranza, head out on a raid to one of the maps, and need to make it back out before extraction.

• Preparation. In Speranza, a raider repairs and crafts gear, trades with the local traders, and levels up skills — more on this in our piece on gear and loot.
• The raid. On the surface, players explore the location, gather resources, and dodge or fight off ARC machines and other raiders at the same time. The exit and extraction itself gets its own breakdown in our piece on the first raid.
• Solo or squad. You can play alone or with a team of up to three — covered in more detail in our piece on co-op.

Who publishes the game

The official storefront pages and Embark Studios’ press page list Embark Studios AB as both developer and publisher, with the NEXON trademark shown alongside on those same pages. Worth knowing, since descriptions crediting the game to a different studio circulate online — the official sources don’t back that up.

What is officially NOT said

• The exact development budget and team size are not publicly disclosed.
• Plans for a story campaign or a single-player mode outside co-op — the official pages describe the game exclusively as a multiplayer PvPvE project, with no separate single-player mode mentioned.
• An end-of-support date or a long-term multi-year roadmap haven’t been published officially — only specific announcements for individual updates, like the next major expansion, exist.
• The exact origin of the ARC machines isn’t detailed in the official short-form descriptions — the pages leave this more as atmospheric background than an explained plot point.

Context: when and where

The game launched on October 30, 2025, and has been getting regular updates since — at least once every few weeks, judging by the news archive on the official site. That means any article about the game’s mechanics (this one included) is worth double-checking if several months have passed since publication.

Platforms, pricing, and system requirements are covered separately, in detail, in our system requirements piece.