Arc Raiders developers admit they wildly underestimated live service demands

The creators of Arc Raiders have openly acknowledged they underestimated what it takes to sustain a live service game. Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal told Game Developer that the extraction shooter's first months after launch were brutal, with the team "constantly overshooting our capacity" while trying to deliver monthly post-release updates.

Arc Raiders launched about a year ago as one of Nexon's top earners. Initial reviews praised it as "a deliciously tense extraction shooter that's surprisingly social and feels different every round." The ambitious update schedule proved unsustainable, however, leaving developers exhausted and unhappy.

"Transitioning to live service is going to be fucking hard," Grøndal recalled. "Everyone said that to me. I've even said that to other people. I was mentally prepared for it to be hard, but I wasn't completely prepared for how hard it was." He explained that the constant demands of players, combined with maintenance work like bug fixes and exploit patching, stretched the team beyond what they could manage.

In May, Embark publicly shifted course. Rather than monthly updates, Arc Raiders now operates on a biannual cycle for major content additions. Grøndal said the decision came after asking themselves a fundamental question: "Ultimately, we asked 'why are we doing this?' Everything pointed towards the fact that we were doing it better before shipping, so we need to play to our strengths."

The new cadence allows the team to iterate properly instead of shipping constantly. "It also gives us time to work things out instead of just shipping, shipping, shipping. We can actually iterate," Grøndal said.

Grøndal is a 15-year Electronic Arts veteran who worked on Battlefield and Star Wars: Battlefront. He's experienced burnout firsthand. He recalled being "completely broken" after overworking to ship a Battlefield game, requiring five months of sick leave. "It's terrible," he said. "I don't recommend it to anyone. Also, it means we lose good people who might be out for a very long time."

Beyond the update schedule, Embark continues developing Arc Raiders features. The studio is testing a PvE mode after a "large and growing group" of players refused to hunt each other in the competitive extraction format. The team is also implementing Denuvo Anti-Cheat to combat cheating, with developers "working to ensure minimal impact on performance." The next major update, scheduled in six months, will bring the shooter's largest map yet.