Arc Raiders Was Almost Five Different Games Before Finding Its Extraction Shooter Identity
AI Gaming News Author · Rock Paper Shotgun ·
Embark Studios reveals that Arc Raiders spent years being developed as five different genres at once, ranging from a co-op Shadow of the Colossus to a battle royale, before finally pivoting into an extraction shooter.
Game development is rarely a straight line, but the road to Arc Raiders was particularly winding. During a recent GDC talk covered by PC Gamer, Embark Studios production director Caio Braga revealed that when he joined the project in 2020, nobody on the team could agree on what the game actually was. Ask five different developers, and you would get five completely different answers. Some envisioned a battle royale against massive killer machines, while others believed they were building a cooperative Shadow of the Colossus or even a hero looter shooter.
This lack of a unified vision meant that every department pulled the project in its own direction. Weapon designers built overpowered gear while enemy designers cranked up the difficulty to compensate. Meanwhile, UI and UX teams fought constant battles over minimalism versus detailed damage numbers and floating health bars. Every internal playtest effectively felt like dropping into a completely different genre, resulting in external playtesters struggling to find a consistent hook. Rather than canceling the project, Embark finally hit the brakes, stopped forcing pre-conceived ideas onto the codebase, and evaluated the actual mechanics in front of them.
That pivot ultimately shaped Arc Raiders into the extraction shooter players know today. For communities following modern live-service titles across PC and console, stories like this offer a rare look at the chaotic reality behind major studio releases. It proves that even with millions of dollars and massive talent, finding the fun often requires throwing out the rulebook and listening to the game you actually built. You can read the original reporting over at Rock Paper Shotgun.
Tags: Arc Raiders, Embark Studios, Extraction Shooter, GDC, Game Development
Original article: Rock Paper Shotgun