Embark makes free-to-play Arc Raiders sound like a nightmare, says its $40 price let it cut a lot of un-fun crap: "Crafting no longer has timers on it that you have to wait out"

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Embark makes free-to-play Arc Raiders sound like a nightmare, says its $40 price let it cut a lot of un-fun crap: "Crafting no longer has timers on it that you have to wait out" News By Ashley Bardhan published 1 December 2025

I fear free-to-play Arc Raiders

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(Image credit: Embark Studios)

Embark Studios decided to save its extraction shooter Arc Raiders from the Sisyphean toil of free-to-play gaming, and no one is happier about it than its own developers.

In fact, design director Virgil Watkins makes Arc Raiders' transition from free-to-play to its current $40-up-front situation sound like a heavenly blessing. He discusses Embark's choice to ultimately abandon free-to-play in an ongoing YouTube series about how Arc Raiders was made, saying that "it's actually, in many ways, made it drastically easier."

"In free-to-play, you need to, in some ways, make things a little stickier than they would be otherwise," Watkins explains. Every action has friction, "just so players are more incentivized to [...] keep playing your game – and, ideally, are incentivized to then spend money on that game."

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"It made it kind of hard to respect the player's time," he reflects. "We almost had a hand on their forehead going, 'Uh, slow down a little bit.'" Apparently, in the free-to-play version of Arc Raiders, even something as practical as crafting would punish you; there were crafting timers.

So, "As soon as that decision came down [to drop free-to-play]," Watkins says, "it made us able to make things take the amount of time that felt appropriate in a lot of ways. So crafting no longer has timers on it that you have to wait out, or the amounts of things we're asking you to collect are a little more rational, or effort and outcome match each other a little more precisely, and things like that. So it's helped a lot.

"On the other side – launching at a price point, you know, we still need ways to monetize that doesn't feel predatory. So that's also been an interesting challenge."

Police confirm Arc Raiders fan got a visit from officers in real life after a concerned motel guest heard him plead for a revive: "I got shot, please get me up!"

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Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. CATEGORIES PS5 Xbox Series X PC Gaming Platforms PlayStation Xbox Ashley BardhanSenior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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Logout Read more Arc Raiders catches heat over expensive cosmetic bundles and lack of earnable premium currency: "Helldivers 2 should be the gold-standard for paid-game content"    Arc Raiders was going to be a cross "between Shadow of the Colossus, Left 4 Dead, and PUBG" according to dev, who says Embark initially had no idea "what kind of game loop we were supposed to have"    The 5th most-wishlisted game on Steam, ex-Battlefield devs' extraction shooter Arc Raiders, was delayed 3 years because they realized it sucked: "This game is not fun"    Arc Raiders launches to over 260,000 concurrent players and 88% positive early reviews on Steam, outdoing The Finals even at $40    As Arc Raiders cuts skin prices, some players reckon Embark is still asking for too much on top of its $40 game: "This is still twice the price they showed in the beta tests"    Arc Raiders gives Escape from Tarkov a run for its money, and the secret is making the shooter feel like an RPG that you can "almost play as a single-player game"    Latest in Third Person Shooters Police confirm Arc Raiders fan got a visit from officers in real life after a concerned motel guest heard him plead for a revive: "I got shot, please get me up!"    Helldivers 2 ramps up the authoritarian satire as High Command takes action against civilians who make too much eye contact, and fans think a new rebel faction is on the way    Embark's "very hot fix" for Arc Raiders' door exploit problem lives up to its name as players who dare try it combust into literal flames: "THIS is the way you deal with issues you can't fast-fix"    Arc Raiders devs drop "very hot fix" to finally stomp the door and weapon exploits that have been plaguing the game since launch    Arc Raiders gear tiers get even messier as one gunsmith finds low-rarity mods are by far the best bang for your buck, and suddenly I don't feel bad about my uncommon blueprints    The backbone of Arc Raiders, Scrappy the rooster, is based on a real bird who crashed a dev Zoom meeting and was photoscanned in as something "we'll definitely replace later"    Latest in News Embark makes free-to-play Arc Raiders sound like a nightmare, says its $40 price let it cut a lot of un-fun crap: "Crafting no longer has timers on it that you have to wait out"    Fortnite Chapter 7 was designed to take the game "back to its battle royale roots," even though it didn't actually start as one, and one lead is "both in awe and hugely proud of this team"    New open-world MMO Where Winds Meet hits 9 million players in 2 weeks, with Steam reviews soaring at a "Very Positive" rating    Two Avatar: Fire and Ash actors have seen the James Cameron movie early, and their tear-stained faces say it all    GTA 6 trailer 3 is nowhere in sight, but fans have still managed to uncover a few more seconds of behind-the-scenes footage thanks to a leak from an apparent dev demo reel    My favourite multiplayer game this year is at its lowest price yet, just in time for its first major DLC    GAME REVIEWSMOVIE REVIEWSTV REVIEWS

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