The ‘ARC Raiders’ Alpha Gained Players Nearly Every Single Day

The second Closed Alpha test of ARC Raiders got a lot of attention this week as word spread about the new extraction shooter.

That positive word of mouth led to a significant achievement, an increase in the number of players every day minus a tiny tick down last night, reflecting glowing sentiments about the game and also more codes being issued over time.

ARC Raiders will be a new entry in the extraction genre releasing some time this year, it’s claimed. But after experiencing the Alpha it seems pretty close to ready at this point, and many are predicting developer Embark may pull off another shadow drop this summer like they did with The Finals, their other PvP game that you may not realize has in fact maintained a solidly consistent playercount over time.

Pretty quickly, ARC Raiders demonstrated how it was a somewhat less hardcore, but appealing version of Tarkov with traditional extraction elements ranging from crafting to home base upgrades. The game itself features harrowing robotic PvE enemies, including one hulking boss that was only defeated 58 times total as tens of thousands of players played the Alpha. And of course, there are plenty of PvP fights as well, the core of the experience and there have been some pretty funny clips already from the test.

What stood out most to me as I played was the sound design, relying more heavily than most other games I’ve ever played on footsteps, gunfire and often looting, prying open extremely loud containers or setting off blaring alarms when looting big drops. Yes, other games have this but it’s also how it sounds. I’ve never been so terrified of cracking gunfire nearby or grit my teeth as hard as when I’m jamming a crowbar into a screaming rusted box.

Yes, all this is inevitably leading to the performance of the game versus Marathon, another high profile extraction shooter that has been running a Closed Alpha simultaneously, though a game that is obviously far less finished than ARC. It was a stark contrast in reception, and Bungie’s new shooter lacked many of the extraction elements fans of that genre want, Alpha or not, while also feeling somewhat inaccessible to new players, especially those hoping to play solo. More than ARC, anyway. As such, the Marathon Closed Alpha lost PC players every day, the inverse of ARC, though some of that may be due to the somewhat inexplicable decision to barely give out new codes despite always promising more.

There are still too many unknowns to know what will happen with Marathon, but ARC? ARC seems destined to be at least some level of genre hit. I am not expecting insane numbers or the ability to dethrone Tarkov. But if it settles into a Finals cadence, I think Embark would be just fine with that.

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