Seven months of struggle, then 166,670 players logged in overnight. That's the short version of what ARC Raiders just pulled off with its Frozen Trail 2.0 update, and the numbers are hard to ignore.
The game peaked at nearly 500,000 concurrent players on Steam around launch in late 2025, then spent most of the summer scraping the floor at around 10,000 to 35,000 players. September hit a low point of roughly 10,000. Two days after Frozen Trail dropped on October 8 across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, that number jumped to 166,670 on Steam alone. It's the highest concurrent count Embark Studios has registered since early April, and it happened fast.
What Frozen Trail actually brought to the table
The headline addition is Pendola Pass, a snowy mountainous region that sits well outside the familiar Rust Belt. Players are already reporting they can spend an hour on the map and still only scratch about 15% of it. That scale matters in an extraction shooter where knowing every corner of a map can feel like a job after a few hundred hours.
Beyond the new map, the update introduced three new Arc enemy types: the Bully, the Skulker, and the Hydra. Combat encounters now play out differently, and that freshness is exactly what a playerbase returning after months away needs to feel like the game has moved on.
The Grappling Hook is the real conversation piece, though. Players can attach to steep cliffs, buildings, and even flying Arc enemies. Clips of Raiders swinging across Pendola Pass have been flooding social media, with more than a few fans drawing direct comparisons to Spider-Man's movement. One player put it plainly on Reddit: they considered picking up a new wall-running skill, then remembered the grappling hook exists and that swinging around at speed with no stamina penalty is just more fun. Hard to argue with that logic.
The Tether Launcher rounds out the new mobility and utility additions, letting players pin enemies to objects. Combined with the Yank Grenade and the new Advanced Camera (which has already spawned its own wave of comedic clips), Frozen Trail added more sandbox toys in a single update than most live service games manage in a full season.
The community that said it was done, then came back anyway
Here's the thing: the player sentiment shift has been almost as dramatic as the numbers. Embark took heat earlier this year when the studio announced it would slow to just two major updates annually. Players who had sunk hundreds of hours into the game felt the development pace didn't match their investment, and a lot of them left.
The reaction to Frozen Trail on Reddit tells a different story now. One widely shared post from a self-described lapsed player summed it up: they had written off Embark entirely, called the devs out publicly, and then logged back in for Frozen Trail and found themselves genuinely excited about the game's future again. The post ended with a straightforward admission of being wrong about the team's ability to deliver.
That kind of community turnaround is rare. It's one thing to bring back players with a content drop. It's another to get people to publicly reverse a negative opinion they'd held for months.
The Frigate, a UFO-style Arc ship added as a new map condition, has become its own highlight reel generator. Players describe it as feeling like a raid encounter, the kind of high-stakes, chaotic experience that extraction shooters live and die by. One player called it "so damn cool" in the same breath as praising the new weapons and weapon mods.
What else changed in the 2.0 update
Frozen Trail also overhauled several core systems that had been points of friction. The Skill Tree received a full revamp, replacing the old binary path structure with a system that forces more meaningful choices at branch midpoints and endpoints. The previous version was widely considered underpowered in terms of build expression, and Embark has acknowledged more tweaks are coming as they see how players engage with the new layout.
The Reward Pass replaced the old Raider Decks and Cred system entirely, introducing Reward Points and a 60-level Frozen Trail Pass split across free and premium tracks. Existing Raider Deck progress moved into a Legacy Pass, so nothing earned previously was wiped.
Weapon Stencils arrived as a new cosmetic layer, with 14 patterns available through the pass, DLC, and loot found in raids. Stenciled weapons can still be looted by enemies when you go down, which keeps the risk-reward tension intact.
The Outpost is a brand new persistent space players can unlock and customize with over 100 furniture designs, most of which are found during raids. It's a social and creative layer that gives players something to work toward between sessions beyond gear progression.
For a full breakdown of everything new in the update, the ARC Raiders Frozen Trail update guide covers Pendola Pass, the Frigate, new weapons, Outposts, and Weapon Amplification in detail. If you want to start swinging around the new map immediately, the grappling hook blueprint guide will get you crafting one at a Level 1 Utility Station.
What comes next for Embark
The free weekend ends October 12, so the concurrent player count will almost certainly drop after that. The real test is whether Frozen Trail converted enough returning and new players into regulars. Embark is also testing a dedicated PvE mode, something fans have pushed for since launch, which could open the game to a segment of players who've been waiting on the sidelines.
ARC Raiders is also currently 50% off across all platforms during the free weekend window, lowering the barrier for anyone who tried it and wants to keep playing. With a PvE test on the horizon and the goodwill Frozen Trail has generated, Embark has more momentum right now than at any point since December 2025. The question is what they do with it before the next major update window arrives.
