Arc Raiders devs realized the game was "not fun," so delayed it for three years

Nearly four years ago, Arc Raiders was announced with a bombastic trailer at The Game Awards. It blew everyone away, the developers included. "I'd want to play that game," Embark CEO Patrick Soderlund recalls thinking at the time, according to a new interview with Edge. The problem was, the actual game felt nothing like that trailer - fresh eyes and internal tests corroborated this. The PvE action could be fun, sometimes, but not often enough.

"It took me a long time to understand what we were even trying to do," says Aleksandr Grondal, who joined Embark as executive producer at this crossroads. He was meant to "put a ribbon" on the multiplayer game ahead of the last six months of development, but the reality was very different.

"There's moments of fun, but it doesn't consistently gel," Grondal thought at the time. These enjoyable moments occurred once every 50 fights, Soderlund concurs. That was simply not good enough for Arc Raiders in its current state to be at all viable.

Soderlund took a more pessimistic approach to the state of the game than Grondal, probably because he'd already spent three years working on the game. "We loved every aspect of what we were trying to design," he says in the interview with Edge. "But we came to the conclusion, after quite a long time: 'Guys, this game is not fun'."

That's why Embark pivoted from a PvE game to a PvPvE extraction shooter. The shift was criticized heavily by fans at the time, which Soderlund says he understands, but he believed the decision would "make sense" if fans could've seen the older versions of the game.

It's also something a lot of Embark's founding developers swore they would never do, after leaving EA and DICE due to being "tired of PvP." However, they retreated to the comfort blanket of what they know best, trying to put their own Shadow of the Colossus-style spin on the competitive multiplayer genre. With enormous robots roaming the landscape, the game certainly doesn't lack the sense of awe that Fumito Ueda's masterpiece embodies.

The decision was justified, as the team got great feedback from the technical test this April. Players are on-board with the new direction for Arc Raiders. It's currently the fifth-most wishlisted game on Steam, two places behind shooter competitor Battlefield 6. There's a buzz around it, and players are excited to see what Embark has cooked over this six-year development cycle.

If you're excited to jump in, make sure your PC meets the Arc Raiders system requirements before spending your cash. If you want something to tide you over until it releases, try some of the best co-op games for size.

Are you getting excited for Arc Raiders? Let us know in our community Discord server, where staff and readers fight giant robots on a daily basis.