Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderland has said the developer abandoned plans to make ARC Raiders free-to-play after the success of Helldivers 2 showed that players are still willing to pay upfront for a well-priced, premium multiplayer shooter.
ARC Raiders launched as a paid game instead of free-to-play thanks to the success of Helldivers 2.
Speaking in a recent interview with GameBeat, Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderlund said the studio reassessed its original plans after watching how Arrowhead’s sci-fi shooter proved there was still strong demand for premium multiplayer titles.
Rather than chasing the scale and retention pressures of free-to-play, Söderlund explained Embark wanted ARC Raiders to sit in a space where players pay upfront for a complete experience.
ARC Raiders ultimately launched at $40, a price Söderlund described as deliberately “relatively affordable”.
He said the team was conscious that the game does not include a traditional single-player campaign, and wanted to avoid setting a price that might feel off-putting.
The goal, he said, was to ensure players felt the game was “totally worth 40 bucks” based on the time they spend with it.
That approach appears to have paid off, as ARC Raiders has quickly established itself as a major player in the extraction shooter genre – reportedly selling more than 12 million copies within its first two months on the market.
The success challenges the assumption that multiplayer shooters must be free-to-play to thrive.
Söderlund also stressed that ARC Raiders is not designed as a conventional PvP-first experience.
While player-versus-player encounters are part of the game, he said the focus is on tension, exploration and survival rather than simply “shooting other players”.
ARC Raiders ditched free-to-play following success of Helldivers 2, Embark Studios boss says
