ARC Raiders Devs Weigh In on Community Behavior

Rather unexpectedly, ARC Raiders has developed a somewhat positive reputation since launch for having a community that largely cooperates rather than competes with one another. While some players have noted times when they’ve fallen prey to an extraction camper or Raiders who had no reason to shoot first, many other players have shared stories of strangers offering help with quests, leading struggling Raiders to a safe extraction, or choosing to partner up for easy kills. For a PvPvE extraction shooter, that kind of player behavior is rare, and it has stood out as one of ARC Raiders‘ most defining traits so far.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer, ARC Raiders art director Robert Sammelin officially divulged that the game does, in fact, keep track of player behavior and then match them with other players accordingly. This news came at the perfect time, as an ongoing conversation in the game’s community has been about whether it should have a PvE-only mode for players who prefer not to play competitively. With that information, then, players who do prefer ARC Raiders‘ PvE gameplay can encourage it by avoiding hostility towards other Raiders. That’s not the only interesting thing Sammelin pointed out in that context, however, as he also shed a bit of light on how the devs approached PvP during playtesting and how starkly different it is from the community.

ARC Raiders’ Devs Played More Competitively During Playtesting

In over a month since its launch, ARC Raiders has looked more and more like a social experiment of sorts that drops players into a massive post-apocalyptic world with few restrictions and little but the ultimate goal of loot and survival in front of them. That framework has invited a level of spontaneity that not every multiplayer game is able to achieve, resulting in hilarious, satisfying, and sometimes even devastating encounters with other players. That spontaneity ultimately puts preconceived distrust at the heart of ARC Raiders‘ gameplay, and with the threat of the ARCs constantly hanging overhead as well, an opportunity for players to chance working together rather than getting in one another’s way.

“Internally, we were hoping that we would strike this balance of having people almost apprehensive about how they are going to interact with other people,” Sammelin stated during the interview. “There is this tension, this underpinning of threat, but also the greater threat, the ARC, would perhaps invite these cooperative scenarios.”

With requests for a PvE-only mode in ARC Raiders persisting, statements like this make one not only sound less appealing but not as possible within the context of what the game wants to be. Sure, the machines often present enough of a threat that facing them alone could still offer a fulfilling experience, but it’s the presence of other players in the extraction shooter that creates more opportunities for unique and unpredictable gameplay experiences. After a while, fighting only the machines on an otherwise barren map would likely feel repetitive, but with other Raiders roaming the surface, the emergent qualities of ARC Raiders‘ gameplay can really shine.

We were hoping that we would strike this balance of having people almost apprehensive about how they are going to interact with other people.

If nothing else, perhaps players should be thankful for what the game went on to become, as Sammelin reported a greater degree of in-game competitiveness between the devs during playtesting. “Internally, playtesting with devs, we’re way worse people than the community when it comes to how we engage in combat. We were certainly hoping that we would see this happen, but I think to the extent that it happened at launch and seeing how people treat each other socially is heartwarming, and it’s really uplifting to see,” Sammelin said. In other words, if players thought ARC Raiders‘ PvP was too much right now, it seems like it was a lot worse during development.

When Sammelin stated, “We were certainly hoping that we would see this happen,” he was referring to seeing the ARC Raiders community come together to the extent that it has. In light of how unfriendly the dev team was with one another, the community’s behavior since launch almost feels like an unexpected outcome rather than a guaranteed one. What began as a tense, distrust-driven sandbox during development has evolved into something far more cooperative in the hands of players, even if that cooperation is never fully assured. Sammelin’s comments suggest that ARC Raiders was built to allow space for either outcome, but it was ultimately the community that chose how that space would be filled.