THE CRUNCH
Arc Raiders has pulled lapsed players back in with Frozen Trail, the update that upgrades the extraction shooter to version 2.0. Steam concurrent counts rose sharply after its release, peaking at 185,443, the highest the game has seen since March and well above its usual sub-40,000 daily peaks. Daily concurrents had been on a near-constant decline in recent months, briefly recovering only after other major updates, so the rebound stands out.
There is a caveat: Embark launched a free trial alongside Frozen Trail, so some of those players are new and may never buy the game. The trial, announced as a four-day free-to-play window running with the update, ends today, which should give a clearer picture of how many players stick around.
Frozen Trail is a large update, touching almost every element of the game. It adds Arc Raiders' biggest new map, Pendola Pass, new Arc enemy units, new weapons, a player home called The Outpost and a full revamp of the skill tree. It also creates a new weapon meta intended to serve PvE and PvP players separately, reviving many underused weapons and tools.
That dual focus may be why Embark is finally officially testing a dedicated PvE mode, one of the game's most requested features. The test runs from 13th to 20th October, but it is not yet known whether it will lead to a permanent PvE-only mode.