Embark Studios’ Arc Raiders will be receiving a second content roadmap soon, reveals CEO Patrick Söderlund.
Arc Raiders recently revealed a massive shift to its update structure. The extraction shooter will now have two huge updates a year with smaller updates between. While the team “wanted to do monthly content updates”, this new structure will allow for larger updates with a “meaningful impact”.
With that said, the extraction shooter will still see frequent updates with balance changes and additional updates. As CEO Patrick Söderlund tells The Fourth Curtain in a new podcast episode, a second roadmap is coming that will detail the game’s new updates.
Söderlund explained that “bigger updates are coming, new maps and things” in the future. “We are going to be publishing, very shortly, [a] kind of officially roadmap of content to come so people know what they are waiting for,” he told the podcast.
The CEO explained that this new roadmap will have “more details than we’ve done in the past”. Prior roadmaps had vague details such as “new ARC threat”. This means that the new roadmap should be more transparent, detailing exactly what’s coming to the game.
As Arc Raiders has now sold 16 million copies across all platforms, the CEO explained that they have a responsibility to give players a “lot more” content than before. He said: “Because of the success of Arc Raiders, we have put ourselves in a position where I feel like we owe it to ourselves and to the people out there playing the game to make a lot more, you know, to just make sure that people have more to do.”
While fans were upset with the recent announcement of the game’s new update structure, so was the CEO. Söderlund told the podcast that he “had to apologise” as he “wasn’t happy with the speed” of new content arriving in the game.
“That’s unfair towards the developers,” he continued. The CEO points to major behind-the-scenes efforts such as new anti-cheat solutions that show how much work the team is doing. While major features players are able to actively use are easier to show, these behind-the-scenes changes take just as much effort as, say, a new enemy or weapon.
Embark Studios has announced that it’s committed to Arc Raiders for the long run. While player counts have dropped since the game’s phenomenal launch, the extraction shooter has earned enough money to keep the studio afloat for years. With that in mind, players will see more support.
Embark has already revealed that it’s working on a revised skill tree for players. However, this is just one of many major gameplay additions the studio is working on. A recent datamine, which correctly identified the game’s next map, found references to a brand-new Clans system and player trading feature.
In the past, Soderland has expressed a desire to massively evolve Arc Raiders. The CEO himself pitched the addition of player trading as well as turning the menu-based hub of Speranza into a proper 3D hub where players can meet one another.
