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Arc Raiders is set in a near-futuristic Italy, so in a sense it's no grand surprise that a real hotel shares a name with the map Stella Montis, notorious among raiders as a hive for PvP, ratting, and every other form of player skullduggery. After learning that Arc Raiders players had besieged the Stella Montis hotel with reviews parodying their experience with the game, CEO Patrick Söderlund of developer Embark Studios says he'd like to "apologize."
Speaking with IGN, Söderlund said he hadn't actually heard of this hotel review trend: "I'm reading them now. I see. 'I don't recommend this for solo players' [laughs]. I didn't know about that. That's amazing. I feel sorry for the poor hotel, though. I'll probably have to call them and apologize."
Another player's review reads: "The only issue is that players sometimes spawn just ten meters away from me."
One raider, who is clearly in very different lobbies to mine, wrote: "The people there are very nice, nobody shoots, and occasionally someone even comes by with a flute."
Söderlund said we can thank CCO Stefan Strandberg for much of Arc Raiders' love of Italy. "We also felt like Italy is a good place for a lot of this to happen for multiple reasons," Söderlund explained.
The Stella Montis hotel overlap is a happy accident here, and the review bomb – which has actually been positive, from what I've seen, with joke reviews mostly being four and five-stars – is just another alley in Arc Raiders' social sandbox.
"I will find out because now I'm intrigued - and I probably will call up that hotel and apologize for what we've caused them," Söderlund added. "That wasn't intended, but I'll promise to get back to you with a reply on that!"
