Arc Raiders surpasses 350,000 players on Steam even as users face major server queue and matchmaking issues
Arc Raiders has quickly cemented itself as the biggest extraction shooter from Embark Studios. Just days after launch on October 30, 2025, across Steam, Epic, PS5, and Xbox Series S|X, Arc Raiders has surpassed another milestone, racking up 354,836 concurrent players on Steam as of November 2. However, this influx of eager players has crippled Arc Raiders’ servers.
Amid the massive influx of players looking forward to loot and shoot in “clanker” infested Speranza, nearly thousands of players are stuck in long login queues, and have reported idly staring at matchmaking screens lasting 5-10 minutes on average, with some outliers waiting 30 minutes in some cases.
Further reports indicate players being kicked mid-match or queued into unwanted parties despite opting for a solo extraction run.
SteamDB charts tell a tale of the ongoing server issues. Arc Raiders peaked at 354,836 concurrent players on Steam on November 2 at 20:00 UTC, before nose-diving to 133,384 players on November 3 at 9:00 UTC.
However, servers have stabilized somewhat, with the game currently supporting 223,286 concurrent players. To put things into perspective, the strain on the infrastructure doesn’t account for gamers playing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X.
Amid the game’s record-high popularity, Arc Raiders switches places with position number three with Battlefield 6 on Steam Charts as the most played game behind Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2. However, the community isn’t all that happy with the influx of players, considering the flood of complaints on the Arc Raiders subreddit, with players complaining of “Infinite In-Queue” screens with no timers.
The Arc Raiders Discord server experienced its own chaotic frenzy with players complaining of one-hour queues, with jokes calling the game a “queue simulator.” The outrage prompted moderators to slap a 15-minute cooldown to curb the hysteria.
Embark Studios quickly acknowledged the issue via Discord. Community managers confirmed issues on “server, voice chat, and party system issues” and promised to roll out fixes “as soon as possible.” The post further detailed:
The team has implemented a login queue as a temporary measure in order to mitigate issues related to forming parties and using voice channels, which will make your matchmaking longer than usual.
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