Player-versus-player-versus-environment survival extraction shooter ARC Raiders will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and Epic Games Store in 2025 for $39.99, developer Embark Studios announced.
A public “Tech Test” will run for PC via Steam from October 24 to 27.
“While ARC Raiders has changed and evolved over the course of development, the world we have built has always been our anchor,” said Embark Studios co-founder and creative director Stefan Strandberg in a press release. “Our inspiration draws from current-day themes taken to their extreme, like the prospect of colonizing space, at a time when the relationship between man and machine is becoming increasingly fraught.”
Strandberg continued, “ARC Raiders takes place in a post-post apocalypse—a distant future where humanity has moved on to build anew. Surely, this world can be a dangerous and treacherous place, but at the same time it’s inherently hopeful, vibrant, and charming.”
While initially announced as a free-to-play title, ARC Raiders is now a premium game.
“It became increasingly clear to us during development that a premium model is a better fit for the experience we’re building with ARC Raiders,” said executive producer Aleksander Grondal. “This shift allows us to focus on what truly matters for this game — creating an engaging, balanced, and replayable action survival experience.”
Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:
In ARC Raiders you enter a vast and lethal world.
People have fled to the underground colony of Speranza, seeking supplies to survive, and shelter from ARC machines on the surface. Demand for resources is at an all-time high, but venturing the surface to get them is a risky job.
You enlist as a Raider, fighting for your own survival and that of your neighborhood in the underground colony—scavenging and hunting for resources that must be extracted back safely from the surface. Standing in your way are ARC machines—a mysterious, deadly foe—as well as other players—Raiders—who are also competing for loot and their own survival.
To grow as a Raider, you must make it back down to the colony alive. There, you get to meet the traders of Speranza to trade your loot and valuables, embark on quests, upgrade and improve and expand your chambers, and grow your character to suit your playstyle—to become the Raider that you want to be.
Whether teaming up or going solo, it’s a game that rewards thinking ahead and carefully observing the world around you, rather than running into action guns blazing. The gameplay is tactile, visceral, and grounded, with a rich and playful sandbox of gadgets and tools, beyond just guns and ammo.
Watch a new trailer below.