The lead design director for ARC Raiders has confirmed that the game’s development team is looking at changes to specific events that promote camping within the shooter. The massively popular extraction shooter from Embark Studios has been one of the hottest stories in gaming throughout the past six months, seeing a meteoric rise following its October release. ARC Raiders quickly accumulated a playerbase spanning millions of fans, even beating out big new shooters like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. A large part of the game’s success has been owed to Embark’s consistent support.
Embark has been exceptionally active in rolling out patches for ARC Raiders and keeping the game fresh. The shooter has received a new update nearly every week since its October 2025 debut, ranging from small bug fixes to new maps, conditions, and lots more. Embark Studios has also teased some big plans for the game’s future throughout 2026, teasing more new maps and conditions alongside the potential addition of some massive new Arc enemies for players to challenge. Now, game balance and camping, in particular, may be a major focus of one of ARC Raiders‘ next updates.
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ARC Raiders is Looking to Address Camping
In a recent interview with PC Gamer, design director Virgil Watkins spoke about some of the changes the ARC Raiders team is considering. Watkins was specifically asked about the Locked Gate and Hidden Bunker events, which have become notorious for camping, revealing that the team is considering “revisions” on the maps. While the ARC Raiders director did not share any specific details, he did suggest that the maps won’t see drastic changes, but more focused adjustments to discourage camping. Watkins had said that Hidden Bunker, in particular, featured more difficult enemies near the entrance to disincentivize camping, though skilled players were able to work through the enemies without much hassle.
The camping problem in Locked Gate and Hidden Bunker is far from the first time skilled ARC Raiders players have caught the development team off-guard. Watkins recently spoke about how fast players are killing some of ARC Raiders‘ in-game bosses, sharing that the team hadn’t expected “entire servers to team up” to fight enemies like the Queen and Matriarch. Embark Studios has also been quick to jump on many cheats and exploits plaguing the game, rolling out bans for several players who were exploiting an item duplication glitch within ARC Raiders.
Embark Studios’ heavy engagement with the ARC Raiders community has been a major factor in the game’s popularity. The difficulty of in-game enemies has been a regular point of discussion among the game’s development team, often surprised by how skilled players have gotten at the shooter. Virgil Watkins has been outspoken about how much the team follows along with community developments, feeling that players have already mastered many of the enemies featured within ARC Raiders. The studio has weighed in numerous times on fan sentiments about its matchmaking queues, quashing theories that the game features “aggression-based matchmaking” for PvP vs. PvE players.
ARC Raiders fans should have lots to look forward to from the game’s future with Embark continuing to push the game further. The upcoming Shrouded Sky update releasing on February 24 will introduce a brand-new weather condition to the game, with the Hurricane bringing fierce winds and affecting player movement. Hurricanes will also be able to affect players’ visibility, both positively and negatively, with debris hampering vision and also helping to spot an enemy’s shields through the storm. ARC Raiders looks to keep its momentum going well into the future, with plenty to get fans excited for a long time to come.
- Released
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October 30, 2025
- ESRB
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Teen / Violence, Blood
