ARC Raiders May Change Its Most Iconic Feature for the Better

Embark Studios confirms it’s currently experimenting with the current team sizes in ARC Raiders, hinting that future plans could involve larger groups to overcome challenges. After a steady and predictable content stream following the launch of ARC Raiders in August 2025, Embark Studios is preparing a number of major changes for the game going forward.

There’s no debating the success that ARC Raiders has seen since its original launch. While the extraction shooter genre is typically one that has been seen as more niche and commonly associated with hardcore players, Embark has seemingly defied these labels and expectations. While softening typical extraction features like seasonal wipes while adding content each month, ARC Raiders has become a smash hit for Embark, passing numerous sales and player milestones. While the ride hasn’t always been smooth, the developer is looking to continue evolving the world of ARC Raiders through some major changes for 2026.

Arc Raiders: Riven Tides Interactive Map

Our interactive map for Riven Tides in Arc Raiders. All the most important locations, weapon cases, items, and ARC types found in the game.

Embark Studios Is Experimenting with Larger ARC Raiders Group Sizes

Embark has continued to push ARC Raiders forward each month following new updates, but the studio has plans to take things even further. ARC Raiders currently supports group sizes of up to 3 players, though that appears to be changing as Executive Producer Aleksander Grøndal recently confirmed in an interview with ScreenRant that the studio has been experimenting with larger team sizes. However, Grøndal quickly mentioned that nothing is official and there are no commitments at this time. However, he did go on to mention that the team is constantly thinking up new ways to “create interesting challenges that invite the players to think and strategize a bit differently than they are used to.”

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FOr now, players are left to speculate what this could mean, whether it will simply be an option to have 4 or 5 player squads and potentially risk upsetting the balance, or perhaps creating that constantly requested PvE experience in the form of a raid or boss fight against some massive ARC unit. The latter of which could harken back to ARC Raiders‘ earlier development build as a PvE shooter. Either way, Grøndal makes it clear that ARC Raiders thrives being in a sandbox environment that supports multiple ways to play, so the team prefers to keep it that way even with whatever may come about with this group size change.

arc raiders players aiming at each other while a queen watches

This news is also part of a bigger effort to evolve ARC Raiders going forward. Earlier this month, Embark announced a regional pricing initiative for ARC Raiders, a policy of adjusting the game’s price based on the market of specific areas rather than setting one blanket price that’s then converted into another currency.

Guess the games from the emojis.

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However, the biggest news of this change came when Embark announced that ARC Raiders would no longer see monthly content updates. Instead, the developer is planning two major content releases per year as the previous monthly release cycle just wasn’t sustainable. To help Embark achieve its goals and ambitions for ARC Raiders, these updates will be much larger in scale, with October’s Frozen Trail already becoming the game’s biggest release yet. In addition to these big content releases, Embark has a dedicated live team that will continue to release patches, in-game events, and smaller updates like the new endgame Trader vendor that is launching this month.