ARC Raiders is ditching monthly updates for two major releases a year, and it is easy to see why

Embark Studios announced it is changing how it updates ARC Raiders going forward. The usual monthly major updates are going away. Instead, ARC Raiders will move to two major updates per year, with a dedicated live service team continuing to handle day-to-day stuff like balance fixes, bug fixes, store updates, and player events in between. 

The idea is that the pressure of monthly cycles was capping how impactful each update could actually be, and Embark wants the space to do things properly rather than shipping something every four weeks just to keep the cadence going.

It comes after the Riven Tides update, adding a rather lacklustre female enemy and beach-themed map. Amongst other new map conditions since the Cold Snap update over the winter.

Before the big stuff lands, next week brings a new Trader to help tide players over. The Trader unlocks at level 25 and is clearly aimed at late-game players sitting on piles of high-value loot with nowhere useful to put it. He offers rare items, cosmetics, and weekly rotating rewards in exchange for your high-value gear, and can sometimes ask you to go and find specific items to trade. 

The trader also offers two perks worth noting: extra Stash space and the Expedition Vault, which lets you carry up to five items across the Expedition so you can set your new Raider up with your favourite loadouts.

How Arc Raiders updates will work going forward

The major update that matters is Frozen Trail, landing in October, and Embark is billing it as the largest update since launch. It is bringing:

• A new map, described as the biggest in the game, 
• New ARC operation with fresh enemy designs and unique behaviours,
• Progression systems for players who have maxed out their Raider Den and hit the Skill Point ceiling, 
• Starting some proper story work around where ARCs come from. 
• There’s also a tonne of new weapons, items, and cosmetics on the way 

The idea is that Embark wants to start adding super meaningful and proper milestone updates to the game to get players back into the title. The recent cadence has only added the odd weather effects and other new additions for the sake of adding something in on the monthly live service updates.

ARC Raiders’ update cadence was running out of steam

The devs said it sort of felt awkward; they and fans both know it. ARC Raiders peaked at just under 482,000 concurrent players on Steam in November 2025 and has since dropped to around 90,000 to 100,000 daily peak players, which, on the raw numbers, is an over 80% decline. The more nuanced read is that its stable baseline still comfortably outperforms most extraction shooters on the market, but the direction of travel has been concerning.

Recent monthly updates have drawn criticism for feeling thin, with new ARC variants in particular getting called out as essentially reskinned enemies with slightly tweaked behaviour patterns rather than genuinely new content. Steam review sentiment in April sat at just 69% positive, noticeably down from the 85% overall score the game has maintained since launch. Streamers have been drifting away, and with them a chunk of the game’s visibility. Daily updates tend to float around 50-50 in positive and negative reviews, according to SteamDB.

The monthly cycle was clearly not giving the team enough runway to build things that stick. Frozen Trail, on paper, looks like it addresses the core complaints around endgame depth, progression ceilings, and content that actually changes how the game plays rather than just adding more of the same. Not to mention the focus on many new Arcs and a storyline is what attracted its massive PvE audience to the game anyway. Doing it right on a new massive mapthat tells a story of what is going on, and some actually new, exciting enemies to boot, can do a massive trick for getting players back into the game.

Expect a massive player drop off though, as there won’t be the carrot on the stick coming every month now. So yes, expect the player count stories to continue till October. But, the payoff should be worth it if Arc Raiders can properly market how good the patch is when it does finally land. It seems like it is a solid step in the right direction now, with the usual seasonal wipes and changes there for players that want to play.

If you’re curious, you can check out the full dev blog about Embark’s plans moving forward.

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