ARC Raiders Sees Surge in Steam Popularity

Following the Frozen Trail update and a free-to-play promotion from October 8 to October 12, concurrent player counts for ARC Raiders on Steam reached nearly 186,000.

Following the release of the Frozen Trail update, concurrent players for ARC Raiders on Steam reached nearly 186,000. The game had not seen numbers at this level since the second half of March 2026.

Embark Studios engineer Leon San Jose Larsson noted the return of the audience. “It’s great to see so many people come back after almost a year,” he wrote, adding that “this won’t last forever.”

The surge in popularity was aided by a free promotion held across all platforms from October 8 to October 12. The developers now face the task of seeing whether the game can retain its audience.

From October 13 to October 20, Embark is also testing an experimental PvE mode without player-versus-player combat. The collected data will help evaluate the prospects of this format, although the producer previously acknowledged that separating PvE and PvPvE could split the community.

ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.