ARC Raiders Lost 80% Of Its Playerbase And It Makes Sense

At a time when live service games have been dying steadily in 2026, "ARC Raiders" is not immune to the downturn in online active users. Developed and published by Embark Studios, the 2025 game is a third-person extraction shooter garnering widespread critical acclaim upon launch. The sci-fi game takes place on Earth in the 22nd century, with the planet's surface overwhelmed by hostile sentient machines. With humanity sheltering in communities underground, player characters are part of expeditions to the surface to recover resources, contending with both hostiles and rival raiders.

Upon its debut, "ARC Raiders" proved to be a commercial success in addition to a critical one. On its launch day, the game reached a peak of more than 260,000 concurrent active users on Steam alone, marking an impressively strong start. By February 2026, four months after its launch, "ARC Raiders" had sold over 14 million copies worldwide across its combined platforms. At its peak, the game featured 466,000 concurrent players in January 2026, again, just through those playing on Steam as their platform of choice.

As of this writing, it's been less than six months after its launch, and "ARC Raiders" has seen a significant drop in its active users since its January highs.

By April 2026, the "ARC Raiders" active player count had plummeted down to 90,000 concurrent users, which is an 80% drop since its January peak. That sort of attrition is something of a sad inevitability in the industry, with games like "Borderlands 4" losing 95% of its playerbase since its own brief peak. Even as acclaimed and popular as it once was, "ARC Raiders" was not immune from this trend, as its own significant drop has proven. But the issue of maintaining a consistently strong playerbase goes beyond the passage of time, even if just by a matter of months.

This all isn't to diminish the success of "ARC Raiders," and 90,000 concurrent users isn't a small number. Still, such a meteoric drop should have Embark Studios rethinking its strategy. The sudden decrease occurred a scant three months since the game reached its online peak, rather than across a more gradual rate of attrition. While there isn't any one overarching reason for the drop, there are several key indicators that could directly inform the dip. Let's go over why it makes sense that "ARC Raiders" lost 80% of its playerbase since its January peak.

The drastic decline in concurrent "ARC Raiders" players comes with several factors worth mentioning as possible direct causes. The biggest is that the title doesn't have the content update schedule that many other major live service games regularly maintain. One of the untold truths of online gaming, as obvious as it may sound, is that developers can't rely entirely on the experience itself to retain players. If there aren't new bells and whistles to keep players coming back for more, their interest is going to inevitably wander elsewhere. "ARC Raiders" is not immune to this.

Embark Studios has announced that it currently only plans to release two major content updates each year for "ARC Raiders," which has vocally frustrated its fans. Other live service games feature a more regular update schedule, with "Fortnite" prominently adding new content each season.

While it may be unrealistic to assume every developer can pump out updates at the same clip as the big players, like the aforementioned "Fortnite" or "Dead by Daylight," fans were likely expecting something reasonably more frequent. Once players complete the content available, there isn't as much of a reason to keep playing, especially given its emphasis on PvE over PvP experiences.

The other major factor likely impacting the player counts for "ARC Raiders" is that live service games as a whole no longer have the long-term viability that they once boasted. This trend has affected both established online titles and newer games, some that launched as recently as this year. With costs going up, online gaming may be one of the expenditures to face easy cuts, further reducing the number of players across the board. Obviously, this is an issue that goes beyond the control of "ARC Raiders" and Embark Studios, but it could play a direct role in its decline.

For reference, "Destiny 2" lost 92% of its players since its concurrent peak, proving even Bungie, the creators of "Halo," couldn't escape a downward trend. To use a more recent example, "Highguard" was a live service game that launched this past January as the debut title of Wildlight Entertainment. After its debut, "Highguard" lost 90% of its playerbase within 20 hours, further signaling that it wasn't just long-term attrition at play in the decline of live service games.

In sum, without regular content updates and the overall decline of the genre, "ARC Raiders" is lucky it's been able to hold onto 90,000 concurrent players. Here's to hoping glory days will come again, as its issues can be overcome. If Embark bears the above signs in mind, and if those dedicated players help keep the game alive.