I’ve tried my hand at an extraction shooter here and there. They tend to be ludicrously hardcore and punishing, and I say this as a sucker with thousands of hours across every MOBA I can get my grubby little hands on. It seems like Arc Raiders has successfully bridged the gap between the sickos and the rest of us, though, as not only is it the extraction shooter of choice for the chronically employed—it’s one of the biggest games on Steam.
According to SteamDB, the game is off to a screaming start, just hitting a peak concurrent player count of over 354,000 Friday night. That’s a wild number for any shooter, especially given that the game only released a little over a week ago. It even briefly overtook Battlefield 6, one of the biggest games on Steam in general right now, with BF6 settling in at around 318,000 players around midnight UTC Saturday morning and Arc Raiders sneaking past it with over 329,000.
Arc Raiders can’t match the long-running shooter’s soaring highs, but it’s drawn in a huge and consistent audience in its first week. For such a nascent game to prove nearly as popular as a goliath like Battlefield, with all its decadeslong history going for it, is a refreshing sight indeed.
As for why, Arc Raiders has a lot going for it. Like BF6, it runs like a dream and doesn’t require a monster rig, which will always be an easier sell than bleeding edge visuals. It’s also, like I mentioned before, not as eager to push you down the stairs and laugh as you collide with every step as a game like Escape From Tarkov might be. PC Gamer news writer Elie Gould’s review put it succinctly: “finally, a less stressful extraction shooter.”
It’s clear the people want that loop of scavenging and escaping in a more chill environment, as evidenced by the only other extraction shooter in Steam’s top ten active users list right now: the irreverent single-player take, Escape From Duckov.
Once upon a time, it felt like Arc Raiders and Marathon were about to go head-to-head for the title of biggest extraction shooter; whatever happens to Bungie’s spin on the genre, Arc Raiders is off to a remarkable head start.
