ARC Raiders

A live-service game with "10 years support plans" that sold 20 million copies goes into maintenance mode after just a few months of life? Is this a joke? Embark makes great games. They have really good tech specialists (and as a programmer, I really appreciate their efforts in open source with Rust/gamedev repositories), but they just CANNOT properly support their live-service games. Both The Finals and ARC Raiders are actually great games in their core, but suffer from the same problems after release. Let's talk about latest game problems. Does the game have broken trial descriptions for last week of season 4? They just write a post in a discord channel. No in-game notification or hotfix update. UPD 07.07.2026: trials description was not fixed until the end of the season. So, devs probably decided, that fixing the [i]last week of the trials season[/i] does not worth it, because it requires to release a hotfix with one line change. Sad. For 4 seasons, players who actually do trials have been complaining about them because they are worthless and unfair to solo/duo players. They did nothing except add MORE weird trials. UPD 07.07.2026: First new season trials week starts with trial "open containers at Spaceport". Such a fair challenge for solo players to loot a biggest map. Wish them good luck. Because other trials are such fair and exciting too. Does the game have broken gun upgrades? They haven't cared about it for 3 months straight. Just suffer from lagging sound and a 5-second delay after every upgrade step, and be careful - the game may decide to upgrade another gun right after the last upgrade for the current one. Does the game have a duper problem for months? Is the economy broken, allowing people to buy a full inventory of anything for just 5 dollars? They don't give a ****. Patrick talks about an in-game market, but these things remains in interviews. No equipment tied to the player, no in-game market for deals between players, just literally zero measures and in-game systems against RMT. Plenty of character perks are broken, do nothing, or offer a whopping 1% increase? They know about it. How do I know that they know? I read it in another interview. Any actions probably? No. Zero perk fixes or balance adjustments (except secuity breach perk nerf. yea, nerf) since launch. Maybe in October, they said. Maybe a rework. For now, invest in broken perks of your choice to satisfy the 15/36 point requirement for the final perks. Also, half of the final perks are useless. Enjoy. Utils? Half of them are garbage no ones uses. Heavy shield? Is a meme. Augments balance? What? Everyone in kitted lobbies uses mk3 survivior, after successful pvp trios runs i have 2-3 rows of them in stash and just forced to sell them to free up some space. They just don't want to rebalance it or don't consider it a problem. Rebalance, not just nerf survivior. Why other games could have 20-40+ perks in implants/augments/etc, different shields, and ARC Raiders cannot? Did the game have problems with the Stella map from release, with texture glitchers? It took more than a month to fix the most common spots and another month to fix the remaining ones. No, my dear reader, think about it again. [i]The entire map was unplayable for more than a month.[/i] Everyone talked about it, everyone knew it. Two months for proper fixes. Every fix takes Embark anywhere from weeks to months, assuming they even want to fix a particular bug. And for now they even moved to "patch every 3 weeks" mode. Eat your new skins colors instead of bugfixes. Oh, today they can't even release new skin colors without breaking this skin in-game bundle?.. Ouch... And the China version, which actually HAS equipment loadouts (we have been asking for them [b]literally[/b] since launch), more game modes, a more balanced risk/reward loot pool in these modes (we are looking at you, useless "close scrutiny" mode in the main game), more augments/grenades/utility items, and their characters even hold chosen weapons while in the lobby during matchmaking. They also have leveling rewards. It's just unfair to main version players. I know Tencent supports this version, so - is the Tencent more productive or knows better what to do with the game then actual creators of the game? And Ermal's deals. They are just absurd. It's perfect example of worst QoL and useless addition to the game, besides obtainable cosmetics. You cannot track deal items. You cannot partially invest items, having a return to in-game mail after rotation if you does not finish the deal, you must suffer and hold these 60 vaporizer regulators in your stash. The current "maintenance" team just does not actually play the game; they don't know its economy. HOW DID THEY FKN DECIDE TO PUT A DEAL FOR 5 QUEEN AND 5 MATRIARCH CORES FOR THE SNAPHOOK BLUEPRINT? It's literally the easiest blueprint in the game now. I have 3 footages this season of loading into electromagnetic storm and obtaining 1 or 2 blueprints in the row from literally FIRST opened containers. Or they offers me to trade Hullcracker 3 for the price of 3.5 hullcracker 1's. No one will do it, everyone just either buy hullcracker 1 and play as is, or able to grade it to level 4, because it's WAY cheaper then buying level 3 from Ermal. Other deals are often just as absurd. But they don't know all of it, because to know something you need to play the game or analyze game data, not just collect it and post interview about how they "track every bullet" and how "it takes 30 TB of data per day". Look at other extractions, and look at Marathon especially - their factions and barters ACTUALLY make sense. In Marathon (which has a lot if its own problems of course, but in other aspects), you MUST do quests and MUST progress factions to do things in-game. Quest reward mostly good. Barters are actually worth it; people rush for certain VIP deals and wait for the daily rotation to buy some rare weapon mod, implant, or backpack. People in-game always grab any salvage - grey, green, blue, purple, gold - it's all needed for faction progress and different barters, from basic heals to prestige items. I'm actually rushed for Traxus repo for being able to buy magazines and optics, and rushed their VIP too for purple and prestige attachments. ARC Raiders quests? People either don't do them or just sell all the quest trash, like smoke grenade traps from the quests. There is no need to say more. Just ask any player. That's it. ----- So, if you plan to play this game a lot and expect endgame content - there is NO endgame content and no healthy game decisions right now. Either wait or play another game [in another genre]. ARC Raiders is not worth buying right now. PvE players suffer from low online numbers and broken lobbies, PvP players suffer from cheaters and a broken economy, and both player groups lack endgame content and items actually worth grinding. There are no truly valuable and rare items in this game. And i will eventually [i]fix[/i] this review and change it to good, but only [i]if/when[/i] they [i]fix[/i] a game :) [strike] Review fix will take from 1 to 4 weeks. See you topside // Your Reviewer [/strike]

This is basically the life cycle of rats in this game. They go into PvP, lose to better players, and when they run out of gear, they reset their reputation by letting themselves get killed 7–8 times without even fighting back. Then they take their last Level 4 Bobcat or whatever high-tier weapon they have left into the Friendly Lobby and start hunting everyone there. Their goal isn't to defend themselves. They actively hunt down PvE players, kill as many people as possible, and extract with as much loot as they can for five or six matches. Once they have enough gear again, they head back into PvP. Then they lose everything, can't compete anymore, and repeat the exact same cycle. Nobody hates PvP itself. The frustrating part is rats abusing the Friendly Lobby just to farm PvE players who are simply there to relax, gather loot, and make progress.