5 Embark Studios Facts You Need to Know Before ARC Raiders Launches

ARC Raiders is finally here. After years of teasing, rethinking, and one very public pivot, Embark Studios just dropped its sci-fi extraction shooter on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and the Epic Games Store. And yeah, it looks like people showed up: as of October 29, it was sitting at No. 1 on Steam’s Top Sellers, per the ARC Radar account. Not a bad way to enter the arena.

So who exactly is Embark, and why should you care?

The Stockholm studio has been quietly building a reputation for slick tech and smart shooter design. Their first game, The Finals, made a splash in 2023 with its fully destructible arenas and chaotic, game show energy. ARC Raiders is a very different beast: bigger, moodier, and set in a post-collapse world where you and your squad sneak, scavenge, and fight off hostile players and murderous machines.

1. The studio’s leadership is stacked with DICE and EA veterans
   Embark was founded in November 2018 in Stockholm by a group of industry lifers: Patrick Soderlund (ex-DICE president and former EA exec), plus Magnus Nordin, Rob Runesson, Stefan Strandberg, Jenny Huldschiner, and Johan Andersson. The plan from day one was to make large-scale, multiplayer-first games on their own tech, but with leaner teams and less of the giant-corporation overhead. They grew fast too: roughly 50 people by early 2019, and about four times that by 2020.
2. ARC Raiders is their second big release after The Finals
   The Finals (2023) was a crowd-pleaser: kinetic, physics-driven firefights and maps that collapse in spectacular fashion. ARC Raiders goes in another direction entirely. This time it’s an extraction shooter in a dusty, retro-future wasteland where rogue robots rule and every raid is a gamble with your loot on the line.
3. They rebuilt ARC Raiders mid-flight because early testing said it wasn’t fun
   When ARC Raiders was revealed at The Game Awards in 2021, it was pitched as a co-op PvE shooter. Then reality hit. After hands-on testing, Embark concluded the game just wasn’t clicking. Instead of shipping something half-baked, they tore it down and rebuilt it as a PvPvE extraction game that mixes survival, looting, and tactical skirmishes. That overhaul stretched development by almost four years, but it’s also why the thing exists in this form at all. Credit where it’s due: that’s a risky call most studios wouldn’t make under pressure.
4. They’re already building two more games, and ARC is planned to run long
   With ARC Raiders launching today (October 30, 2025) across PC and consoles, CEO Patrick Soderlund says Embark has two new projects spinning up. One supposedly has 'a lot more edge' than their current lineup; the other is 'a little bit more conventional.' As for ARC itself, Embark is treating it like a marathon: a 10-year support plan, ongoing content drops, and an 'Expedition Project' progression track that pays out big rewards if you grind resources over multiple weeks.
5. Yes, they use AI — but not to auto-generate your guns
   ARC Raiders leans on some advanced tech, and that includes AI and machine learning. Executive producer Aleksander Grondal has been clear about what that does and doesn’t mean. The team uses AI for certain voice lines and animations, and machine learning to make the game’s robotic enemies feel more convincing. But they’re not using AI to spit out in-game art assets like weapons — that’s something they’ve been researching, not shipping.

   'That’s a research project, not something we’re using in the game right now,' Grondal said in an interview this week.

   On the asset side, Embark still relies on photogrammetry — scanning real-world objects to build high-fidelity digital models — which tracks with how their games look and feel.

Bottom line

Embark’s whole deal is marrying bleeding-edge tech with shooter instincts honed over decades, and ARC Raiders is their biggest swing yet. If you’re into high-stakes raids, hostile player encounters, and big stompy robots, today’s a good day to jump in. If you try it, I want to hear how your first run went — triumph, disaster, or something in between.