ARC Raiders Dev on Potential PvE Mode Future: The Challenge Is Not “Undermining the Premise of the Game”
With the PvE mode public test in ARC Raiders now concluded, the team at Embark Studios is diving deep into the feedback collected over the week-long test. While the community has been divided on whether the game needs a PvE-only mode, one concern is that it could compromise the game’s core experience. Well, Embark is well aware of that challenge, which is why they’re taking the month to really look at the feedback they’ve gotten around the mode before deciding on the future of things.
Now you might be wondering what that means, and we have a bit of an answer, as the studio recently sat down to answer some of our questions about the PvE test.
Before Embark Decides on PvE for ARC Raiders, They Need to Dig and Understand What the Need Is for It
If you thought the decision to add a PvE mode would be easy for Embark Studios, think again: despite positive (and negative) feedback from the recent test, the studio isn’t ready to make a concrete choice yet. The team shared this in a recent PvE blog post shortly after the test ended, noting that the community has been rather polarizing around the mode.
“As mentioned, we need a bit of time to understand what the data is telling us, and what our community is saying. On a surface reading, we know that the test has been polarizing. As always, our decision on how to proceed will prioritize the overall health and enjoyability of the game.
We don’t yet know what the outcome of the data analysis will be, but we expect to be able to follow up with further information in November.
Thanks once again for participating in the test and leaving your feedback. It is essential for us to be able to make informed decisions for the development of the game.”
But it’s not just the community that felt divided; for those who remember the game’s history, it started as a PvE-only cooperative looter before pivoting to an extraction shooter. Embark detailed much of the reasoning behind the shift to an extraction shooter in their video doc a few years back, but it boiled down to the current game not working with the vision they wanted.
“It didn’t work. The larger recipe for the game wasn’t there. And again, we couldn’t replicate the sessions consistently enough,” Stefan Strandberg, Embark’s CCO (formerly ARC Raider’s creative director) said in the video doc back in 2025.
Despite a year since launch and players expressing interest in PvE, the studio has remained skeptical because of earlier reasoning that led them to pivot to a more PvP-centric experience. Embark executive producer Aleksander Grøndal tells us:
“Now that we’ve concluded the PvE matchmaking toggle test, we’re doing a deep dive into what that means. Of course, we were a bit skeptical about bringing such a mode to the game for historical reasons, but now we need to discuss what we want to do going forward.”
When we followed up to ask whether tuning the game for PvPvE accidentally stumbled into a compelling PvE hook—or if the community simply evolved into something the studio hadn’t initially anticipated—Grøndal noted that it is likely a mix of both:
MP1st: Do you think tuning it for PvPvE ended up accidentally finding that potential PvE hook/loop, or was it more so, because of the kind of community the game ended up drawing in, that perhaps the studio was not necessarily “wrong, but simply didn’t expect that kind of social engagement to come from it?
Grøndal: That’s hard to say, but perhaps a bit of both? I think the game has an appeal in its nature and that a certain player type wants to play the game without the stress, you know? Perhaps this is more a signal that the game could support more player types, and we need to figure out how to support that. The challenge, of course, is how we do that without undermining the premise of the game itself.
But what would ARC Raiders look like if it kept PvE as a mainstay mode? How would the studio maintain that premise while also addressing content between the two modes in the future? Well, that’s something we asked the team about, but given a decision has yet to be made on whether or not to keep the mode, they did expand further on what kind of questions they need to answer first when it comes to understanding PvE.
MP1st: Assuming all goes well with the PvE testing and it becomes a mainstay, how does the studio plan on addressing the content pipeline between the two modes in the future?
Grøndal: That is exactly what we need to consider now, but before we get to the content discussion, we need to understand what the need is here. Is it more a chill side mode you can play between more intense PvPvE rounds? Is it more a challenge mode that you can test your skills against AI? Or perhaps it’s a full experience with PvE only? These are some of the questions we need to dig into before we decide how to go forward. All options will have different implications on how we build future game updates.
An interesting answer that suggests there may be much more work on PvE if it does, in fact, become a permanent mode. Certainly more than what we tested, though even that is an experience Embark is likely considering if the feedback supports it.
I recently published my own thoughts on ARC Raiders PvE mode, which I found fun, though I noted it needed a more PvE-centric, risk-based experience to bring it more in line with the PvP experience, without, well, being PvP. Either way, I’m in the camp that the mode could work, but I also didn’t want it to be just “easy”; I wanted to see Embark evolve it into something with as much risk and reward at its core experience.
For now, we wait to see what Embark ultimately decides from the data they’ve collected, and what’s next for the franchise when that decision gets shared next month.
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