ARC Raiders Reveals How Many Players Focus Solely on PvE vs PvP

ARC Raiders developer Embark Studios has revealed that about 30% of the game’s community engages solely in just the PvE elements of the shooter, which can range from shooting those pesky Ticks all the way up to taking on the Matriarch. Ever since ARC Raiders launched back in October 2025, the divide between PvE and PvP players has continued to grow, but new data straight from Embark shows that there are a large portion of players who actively partake in both sides.

When ARC Raiders first started development, Embark Studios intended for the shooter to be an entirely PvE experience, akin to the likes of the massively popular Helldivers 2. But during the early phases of production, the team came to the realization that the shooter simply wasn’t fun enough and opted to include PvP to add further tension and replayability. The addition, which turned ARC Raiders into an extraction shooter, wasn’t to make a competitive shooter, hence why there are no PvP leaderboards in the game. Instead, Embark was looking to make the experience even more unpredictable and stressful, forcing players to not only go up against deadly ARC enemies, but fellow Raiders too.

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Embark Says 30% of ARC Raiders Players Focus On Just PvE

Clearly, pivoting from a PvE-only shooter to a PvPvE one was the right call, as ARC Raiders has sold millions of copies, won the Game Awards’ Best Multiplayer trophy, and received rave reviews from both players and critics. There are a multitude of reasons for the game’s success, but one in particular is that ARC Raiders appeals to both casuals who simply want to experience the PvE side of the shooter and the more dedicated individuals who are willing to put their gear on the line in PvP engagements. And according to Embark (via The Guardian), there’s a decent split between the two sides. Approximately 30% of players partake in just PvE, another 30% are PvP enthusiasts, and the remaining 40% are a mix of both.

Another interesting statistic revealed by executive producer Aleksander Grøndal is that nearly every single player in ARC Raiders uses proximity chat, with 95% of Raiders speaking to one another. The producer also told the outlet a rather unsurprising fact, as Grøndal says that solo players are often much more friendly, while those who group up into Duos or Trios are much more aggressive. For anyone who has played ARC Raiders, being friendly in solo lobbies has become a general rule of thumb, unless you’re incredibly deep into the aggression-based matchmaking.

ARC Raiders‘ aggression-based matchmaking also plays a huge part in segregating PvE and PvP players. Although Embark has previously insisted that there’s “no such thing” as a friendly lobby in ARC Raiders, anybody who has played enough of the shooter knows all too well that not shooting other Raiders for roughly 10 games will place you into “care bear lobbies,” where nobody engages in PvP. This is due to the aggression-based matchmaking, which matches players based on how aggressive they are towards other players. It’s a much more complicated system with other elements involved, but it does allow casual players who are just looking to take on the Queen or Matriarch to do so without the concern of being shot in the back.

Balance the critic averages

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Although Embark has actively encouraged co-operation between Raiders in the past, such as with the recent Shared Watch event, which rewarded players for taking down ARC together, the studio has said it was surprised by the community coming together to take down larger ARC bosses. With entire servers teaming up to take down the likes of the Queen and Matriarch, Embark has admitted that players are burning through ARC Raiders‘ large enemies faster than intended.