By Like nearly every game, the creation of Arc Raiders wasn’t a seamless journey. In truth, the whole PvE experience that was showcased years back was nearly entirely abandoned in favor of the extraction shooter that exists today, but the creators at Embark Studios describe how unsuccessful concepts contributed to discovering the enjoyment.
“We invested the bulk of our initial year simply developing tools,” founder and CEO Patrick Soderlund remarked in a recent developer documentary concerning the creation of one of 2025’s most significant successes. “I also recognized that we weren’t going to execute everything perfectly. We were going to commit numerous errors along the path, and we needed to prepare for those errors and essentially create a buffer to accommodate those errors.”
“Identifying the enjoyment isn’t always something you can effortlessly state, ‘We’ll simply do this, and it’ll be enjoyable'”, executive producer Aleksander Grondal clarified. “What you understand is: you labor and you input the element, and it’s not functioning as you envisioned. Thus, you must begin revising it and iterating on it and possibly reconsidering some of your original beliefs… That arises from engaging with the game and experimenting with what you’ve built.”