This community-driven extraction shooter has pulled ahead of FPS favorites Battlefield 6 & Helldivers 2 on Steam
The Arc Raiders bandwagon isn’t slowing down as the game once again broke its own Steam concurrent player record, reaching an all-time peak of 462,488 concurrent players on November 9 at 20:00 UTC, the first time the game has soared past 400,000 simultaneous players on the platform.
This stable growth came just over a week after Arc Raiders' launch, with the game currently sitting at over 250,000 concurrent players. Arc Raiders launched last week, attracting 264,673 players to the platform, with player counts stabilizing at a daily average of over 300,000. Over the course of the week, player counts gradually rose until Arc Raiders finally soared to 416,517 players on November 8, and the game reached its all-time peak of 462,488 on November 9.
The game has managed to go toe-to-toe with Battlefield 6 on a daily basis. It has finally eclipsed Battlefield 6’s recent 24-hour peak of 441,035 players with its 24-hour high of 462,488, leaving Battlefield Studios' current player count trailing at 237,212 players, at least for now.
This makes Arc Raiders the fourth-biggest game on Steam, trailing behind Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds. To put things into perspective, Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders has also managed to one-up PlayStation and Arrowhead Game Studios’ Helldivers 2’s all-time peak of 458,709 players from February 24, 2024.
The question remains as to why Arc Raiders has become so successful in a competitive year, crowded with FPS shooters. Market Analyst Rhys Elliott of Alinea Analytics stated, “Arc Raiders is great because it focuses on community – NOT because it’s an extraction shooter.”
Recently, Embark Studios rolled out Arc Raiders patch 1.1.0, adding new map conditions like Hidden Bunker and Blue Gate Night Raid. The studio has also teased a full 2025 roadmap, with a new map, Stella Montis, coming later this month.
However, some gamers have criticized Arc Raiders' use of machine learning AI to program the movement of more complex Arc enemies. Furthermore, the main concern of many critics and gamers is Embark’s AI voice model, which was also used in The Finals.
Voice actors had been hired to train Arc Raider’s Text-to-Speech system, which many complain is mediocre and muddies the experience. Embark claims it uses AI to speed up voice line production rather than manually recording them.
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