The question has been sitting in the Arc Raiders community since launch day: what if you could just play without other players trying to kill you? Embark Studios is finally trying to answer it, and executive producer Aleksander Grøndal says the answer might reshape the game entirely.
Starting October 13 through October 20, ARC Raiders will run a limited PvE co-op test, stripping out player-versus-player encounters and letting squads focus purely on fighting the machines. Grøndal describes it as an essential step toward answering a question the studio has sat on for too long.
The split the community already has
Here's the thing: the divide between PvE-focused and PvPvE players in Arc Raiders has never been subtle. The game originally started development as a pure PvE experience about fighting giant robot invaders, only pivoting to its current PvPvE extraction format very late in production. That history has never fully left the community's memory, and a vocal portion of players have spent months asking Embark to bring back something closer to those roots.
Grondal acknowledges the tension directly. "The community is already split along those lines," he says. "If the game eventually will represent that? Quite possibly."
That is not a throwaway line. The executive producer of an extraction shooter saying it might one day exist as two separate experiences is a significant admission, and it signals that Embark is genuinely treating this test as more than a short-term event.
What Embark is actually worried about
The studio is not running this test without reservations. Grøndal is candid about the internal friction the idea generated. Not everyone at Embark was enthusiastic when the PvE test was proposed, and the concerns are legitimate ones that PvPvE players will recognize immediately.
Remove the threat of other players and you change the tension that makes extraction shooters feel meaningful. The risk-reward calculus of deciding whether to push further into a zone, the paranoia of hearing footsteps that might be human, the uneasy truces that form between squads who both need to extract, all of that evaporates in a pure PvE environment. Grøndal puts it plainly: "All of these are valid risks."
There is also the question of the in-game economy. Arc Raiders' loot and resource loop is built around the friction of PvPvE play. A separate PvE mode with access to the same high-end gear could warp progression in ways that affect the main experience too.
"We need to answer this question"
What makes Grøndal's comments worth paying attention to is the framing. This is not a developer saying they ran a fun community event. He frames the test as something the studio owes both itself and its players.
"I really feel like we need to answer this question, at least to ourselves, and of course also to the players," he says. The studio will look at the data and community feedback coming out of the October window before deciding what comes next.
The Frozen Trail update, which recently pushed Arc Raiders past 125,000 concurrent players on Steam for the first time in months, added weapon amplification that lets players tune guns specifically for PvE or PvP encounters. That feature reads differently now. Whether you want to optimize your PvE skill build or sharpen your extraction efficiency, the ARC Raiders strategy guides have you covered while the meta shifts.
What a split would actually mean
If Embark does eventually move toward two distinct modes or even two distinct products, the implications run deep. Separate player pools, separate balance passes, separate content roadmaps. The studio would essentially be maintaining two games under one name, which is a resource commitment that even well-funded developers have struggled with.
Grondal does not pretend otherwise. "Of course, it creates some challenges on our end. We need to figure out what we really mean by that."
The honest answer right now is that nobody knows, including Embark. What the October test provides is real data instead of speculation. Player counts, session lengths, retention numbers, and community sentiment will all feed into a decision that could define what Arc Raiders looks like a year from now.
For players who have been waiting for a reason to return or a reason to finally try the game without the PvP anxiety, the Frozen Trail update rundown is a solid starting point before the PvE window opens on October 13.
