ARC Raiders arrived with enormous momentum, becoming one of Steam’s biggest multiplayer launches of 2025. However, its player count has continued to fall in the months since, with the extraction shooter now attracting only a fraction of its launch audience.
In brief:
- ARC Raiders recently averaged around 28,000 concurrent Steam players
- The game previously reached an all-time Steam peak of roughly 465,000 to 482,000 players
- July 2026’s average player count fell by more than 20 percent
- Embark is betting on larger updates to bring players back
The latest SteamCharts snapshot shows ARC Raiders with 31,401 players active an hour earlier and a 24-hour peak of 35,188. Its average over the last 30 days was 28,076 players, compared to more than 264,000 during November 2025.
So, that basically represents an average player decline of approximately 89 percent from its explosive opening month. July was another difficult period, with the average falling by 20.20 percent compared to June. The decline appears to be slowing, however, as the latest 30-day period recorded a smaller 2.04 percent drop.
Different trackers report slightly different records, but either way, the current 24-hour peak is more than 90 percent below the game’s highest point.
The numbers look dramatic because ARC Raiders started from such an unusually high position. Maintaining more than 28,000 average concurrent players on Steam is still respectable for a multiplayer game, especially since these statistics do not include players on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S.
The bigger concern is whether Embark Studios can stop the steady decline and give existing players enough reasons to return. Previous updates produced noticeable activity spikes, but those gains have not lasted.
Frozen Trail Could Bring Players Back
Embark has moved away from delivering major monthly updates and will instead release two larger updates each year. Smaller events, balance changes, bug fixes, and live-service updates will continue between them.
The next major expansion, Frozen Trail, is planned for October and is expected to introduce a massive new map, fresh ARC enemies, progression improvements, weapons, items, and additional story content. It could provide the comeback ARC Raiders needs, but keeping players engaged until then may be Embark’s biggest challenge.
