Palworld developer John “Bucky” Buckley has heaped praise on Arc Raiders for its technical polish and Embark Studios’ handling of Unreal Engine 5.
Arc Raiders launched last week and has gotten off to a strong start. Despite concerns about cosmetic pricing, the title currently holds a “Very Positive” rating on Steam. During its opening weekend the game’s servers briefly went down after reaching a peak of 337,000 concurrent Steam players, and the team warned that matchmaking may be slower than usual while Embark Studios rolls out fixes. Given the developers have already laid out a full roadmap, it looks positioned to remain a major contender.
Unreal Engine 5 has attracted criticism for performance issues in some titles, especially stutter. Buckley acknowledged those concerns while praising Embark’s execution: “It’s trendy to say ‘eww UE slop’ to games these days, because blaming engines is ‘in’, but Arc Raiders might be the new benchmark for UE development.” He added that he’s “in awe of what they’ve achieved.”
Arc Raiders’ studio founder has openly criticized enemy health bars, arguing they reduce gameplay to an “Excel sheet” and that immersion is preferable to “answers served on a silver platter.”
