Following the launch of Frozen Trail, Embark Studios’ ARC Raiders is officially back in the limelight. On Steam, the extraction shooter peaked at nearly 186,000 concurrent players. It’s even more impressive considering it hasn’t seen this many since the second half of March 2026.
While Embark hasn’t said anything about the reception, Fullstack engineer Leon San José Larsson tweeted about an earlier milestone. Despite admitting that it “won’t last forever,” he remarked that it’s great “seeing so many people back again after almost a year.” After Embark switched to a bi-annual update cadence to avoid developer burnout, the positive reception to Frozen Trail must be a relief.
Of course, there is a catch: ARC Raiders hosted a free weekend across all platforms, with the full game available to try from October 8th to 12th. That ends today, so it remains to be seen whether player numbers hold up. Then again, Embark is testing a new experimental PvE-only mode starting tomorrow and running until October 20th.
That may be enough to sustain interest and provide useful data on whether such a mode is viable (even if it splits the game down the middle). Time will tell, so stay tuned for further updates.
ARC Raiders is currently available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. For more details on Frozen Trail, head here.
