Did you notice Arc Raiders climbing the Steam charts again? The extraction shooter just got its big Frozen Trail update, and players are flooding back in numbers we haven't seen since May.
Right now, Arc Raiders is sitting at #5 on Steam's best-sellers list, only behind this week's other big releases like Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Gears of War: E-Day. But those launched earlier this week, so Arc Raiders could easily leapfrog them soon. The new Frozen Trail Collector's Set cosmetic DLC is also selling like hotcakes, currently at #8 on the best-sellers list.
On the concurrent players front, Arc Raiders has eclipsed 106,000 on Steam—that's good for 12th place overall. And it's still climbing; it gained 5,000 more players just while this article was being written. It's safe to say the numbers will keep rising throughout the day.
This surge isn't a coincidence. Back in May, Embark announced it would switch to a semi-annual cadence for major updates, and Frozen Trail is the first fruit of that new strategy. The studio wanted more time to deliver bigger, more polished updates while also giving developers a healthier work environment. That's a bold move in the live-service world, where constant content drops are the norm.
Arc Raiders never completely died—it still averaged 40,000 concurrent Steam players in September. But compared to the nearly half a million it averaged last holiday season, the drop was steep. Those peak numbers were probably never sustainable, but the fall was still dramatic.
Of course, one day post-update doesn't tell the whole story. We'll have to wait and see if this revised roadmap pays off long-term. But for now, it's clearly off to a strong start.
If you've been on the fence, this weekend is the perfect time to jump in: Arc Raiders is free-to-play on all available platforms. Will you be checking it out? Let us know in the comments!
Comments (0)
Log in to join the discussion
Log InNo comments yet