Arc Raiders Devs Reflect On Scrapped Ideas, Failed Prototypes, And The Search For Fun

Arc Raiders arrived as one of 2025’s most visible releases, but its path to launch was defined by detours and a long sequence of discarded experiments. Embark Studios built and abandoned entire systems before settling on the extraction shooter that the studio now stands behind. What survived to release was shaped less by a single vision and more by a willingness to test ideas until they broke.

Patrick Söderlund, founder and CEO, describes the early stages as a year spent constructing internal tools while accepting that missteps were inevitable. His view of the process is direct, unvarnished, and grounded in the reality of a large creative project.

“We spent the majority of our first year just building tools… I also knew that we weren't going to get things right. We were going to make a ton of mistakes along the way, and we had to plan for those mistakes, and kind of get ourselves in a cushion to be able to make those mistakes.” — Patrick Söderlund

The studio had originally shown the game as a PvE shooter with a different tone and structure. Much of that version is gone. Söderlund summarised the shift with a blunt comparison.

“Guess what? If you're trying to send people to Mars, you will crash a bunch of rockets. We crashed a bunch of rockets.” — Patrick Söderlund

Embark staff recall specific prototypes that never made it past internal testing. Technical designer Nora Silow worked on an early enemy concept described as a four-legged pouncing creature roaming the map. It was removed as the team refined combat pacing and visual clarity. Many other concepts met the same end as the project leaned toward a cleaner extraction loop.

Senior technical artist Paul Greveson notes that several promising ideas looked stronger on paper than they did in active play.

“Sometimes ideas written down on paper sound really cool when we’re talking about them, but actually, now, I’m just running around looking up all the time.” — Paul Greveson

The studio’s method relied on constant testing, even when those tests highlighted flaws in the assumptions behind a feature. Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal describes this cycle as a practical necessity rather than a creative flourish. Systems were implemented, tested, reshaped, or removed, often in quick succession.

“Finding the fun isn't always a thing that you cannot just automatically say, ‘We'll just do this and it will be fun.’ What you know is: you work and you put the thing in and it's not working like you want it to. So, then, you need to start reworking it and reiterating on it and maybe rethinking some of your initial assumptions… That comes from playing the game and playing around with what you've created.” — Aleksander Grøndal

Arc Raiders’ final form is the product of those cycles. The game retains traces of its broader ambitions, but its clearer focus as an extraction shooter reflects a willingness to abandon the unwieldy parts. Embark often explained that its priority is not novelty for its own sake, but a loop that feels steady and replayable after dozens of hours.

The process behind Arc Raiders shows how a studio can build a large project by discarding more than it ships. In this case, the game’s identity solidified only after the studio let go of early expectations and rebuilt around what worked in practice, not theory.

Read also: Arc Raiders recently added a dedicated Duo mode and reduced cosmetic prices in a swift response to early feedback. The update reshaped matchmaking by grouping two-player squads together while maintaining quick queue times, giving players a more consistent structure for smaller-team runs.