Arc Raiders move away from free-to-play made the game ‘dramatically easier’ to make, dev Embark says
Developer Embark Studios has said shifting Arc Raiders from free-to-play to a premium release made the extraction shooter far easier to design by removing grind-heavy systems and letting the team better respect players’ time.
Embark Studios has said shifting Arc Raiders from free-to-play to a premium game “dramatically” simplified development.
In the latest episode of the studio’s Evolution of Arc Raiders behind-the-scenes series, design director Virgil Watkins said the team struggled to build a satisfying extraction shooter while also designing the sticky progression loops free-to-play games rely on.
Watkins explained: “In free-to-play, you need to… make things a little stickier, take a little more time, a little more grind.”
The design director noted that these pressures clashed with the studio’s desire to respect players’ time.
Once the decision was made to go premium, he said, the entire design flow opened up.
He said: “Crafting no longer has timers… the amounts of things we are asking you to collect are a little more rational; effort and outcome match each other a little more precisely.”
Even so, Watkins said the team was mindful of avoiding predatory monetisation now that the game has an upfront price.
That challenge sits alongside a larger strategic question the studio wrestled with for years: whether Arc Raiders should follow the massive audience potential of free-to-play or rethink the project entirely.
CEO Patrick Söderlund said the team pushed for the change as the game evolved away from its original 2021 co-op shooter pitch and toward a PvPvE extraction format.
He said: “The team started to ask me questions — was free-to-play the right model for us?”
Arc Raiders launched as a premium title in October 2025 and went on to become the most successful global debut in parent company Nexon’s history, vindicating the Embark’s shift away from the model it had used for The Finals.
