Arc Raiders players find huge behavior gap between PS5 and PC lobbies

A pair of Arc Raiders players decided to test how different the game feels when crossplay is switched off. One played strictly on a PlayStation 5 (curr. $525.99 on Amazon), while the other spent the week on PC. They logged every round, every interaction, and every moment where another player chose to talk, trade, or pull the trigger. The results are...interesting, to say the least.

Their approach was as straightforward as it gets: play solo, drop their weapons during encounters, and try to communicate before making any move. Over the week, they recorded more than 400 combined player encounters across both platforms, post which they had a small but telling snapshot of how the game’s community behaves.

The PS5 player ran 84 rounds and met 237 players. A large chunk of those encounters were hostile. Out of all the players he met, 102 shot on sight. Another 58 pretended to cooperate before landing a backstab. Friendly interactions were there, but pretty limited - only 42 wished him luck, and 7 stuck together long enough to extract as a team. Even attempts at short team-ups often ended poorly, with 28 players faking cooperation before turning hostile at the extraction zone.

The PC side looked very different. Across 51 rounds and 172 encounters, the number of friendly interactions nearly flipped. Ninety-eight players wished the PC user luck, and 17 stayed friendly through extraction. It's not like the hostile encounters disappeared - 47 still shot on sight, and 7 lied before attacking - but the overall share of hostile interactions stayed lower than what was recorded on PS5. The pair also mentioned that their attempts to communicate - talking, trading items, or suggesting short team-ups - were received far more openly on PC. On PS5, the brother said he eventually shifted to a quieter, more cautious playstyle because almost every encounter pushed toward immediate conflict.

The charts compiled (see below) from their data (thanks to u/Scared-Computer502) make that contrast even more clear. In a nutshell, PC players showed a higher share of friendly or cooperative actions, while PS5 encounters resulted in more backstabs and instant hostility. Please note that the sample size is still small and limited to just two players and one week of play, but the gap between the two experiences was wide enough that both felt it was worth sharing. For these two players (at least), Arc Raiders felt like two different games depending on where they played.

You can check out our Arc Raiders review here.