Check Out Smash-Hit ARC Raiders That Just Broke 295K Concurrent On Steam

ARC Raiders had its cross-platform launch on October 30th, and two days later the game has already met and exceeded 295 thousand concurrent players on Steam—a number we've had to update several times during the writing of this article. When we started the newsroom this morning, it was just 250K, and when I started the final writeup, it had already reached 277K. Regardless, the game seems easily bound for 300K at this rate, having already become the #1 top selling game on Steam and reaching a #4 on its Most Played list, just behind Battlefield 6 with its impressive ~ 477K players number. But ARC Raiders is no Battlefield, so what's the cause of all the hype?

There are a few factors at play here, but the most important draws primarily boil down to the game being gorgeous, running fairly well across platforms despite running on the oft-maligned Unreal Engine 5, and being hailed as a very well-made third-person extraction shooter. "If you build it, they will come", and ARC Raiders seems to be a great example of that, providing both a great multiplayer extraction shooter experience and a worthwhile single-player story for those who don't wish to engage with multiplayer. Its battle pass is free, and the game is content-rich on top of that.


There are some critiques of the game, mostly boiling down to the core gameplay loop of extraction shooters and some lacking rewards in PvP play. Some players also decry the limited boons of the Deluxe Edition, which adds $20 on top of the base $39.99 price of the game, but the Deluxe Edition is very blatantly only providing additional cosmetics, not claiming to do anything else. There's no incentive for players to buy or upgrade to that version of the game unless they simply want to support the developers, and feeling tricked into buying it otherwise is more or less losing a chess match to a dog. If you don't like these types of games, this title probably won't be the one to change your mind—but if you and your friends have $40 to spare for hours to kill on a highly-polished multiplayer extraction shooter, ARC Raiders seems tailor-made for you.


Even as I write this very article, the player count on Steam alone continues to creep closer and closer to 300K. If it doesn't slow down, it could very well end up meeting or exceeding the current heights of Battlefield 6, though I do reckon that's somewhat unlikely based on the size of the respective genres. As-is, though, ARC Raiders is putting up a truly impressive show against the heavyweights in the market.


For players who want to hop in on the game as soon as possible, it's available for $39.99 on Steam right now and is even bundled with every purchase of a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership now through November 20th. For players sure they won't need a refund and who want any discount possible, the game is also available from official PC key distributor Fanatical for just $34.39, providing a slick 14% discount for the extra-committed. The game is also available for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X, but not Nintendo Switch 2—at least, not yet.

PC system requirements for ARC Raiders are pretty reasonable, too, with a baseline of an Intel Core i5-6600K and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. Any modern GPU paired with one of our top gaming CPU picks should prove more than enough to play this new blockbuster title at 60+ FPS.