Arc Raiders has officially sold 12 million copies, so Embark's giving everyone a free gold hammer: "The way it took off, I think, took all of us by surprise"

Confirming a recent analyst estimate, Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios announced that the game has sold 12 million copies across all platforms since its launch on October 30, 2025.

To celebrate this milestone, Embark is giving all players a golden raider tool. This reward was originally intended to celebrate 10 million players, but the holiday rush catapulted the game right past that.

To claim the gold hammer, you just need to have logged into Arc Raiders a single time before midnight CET / 6pm ET / 3pm PT on January 13, 2026. In other words, play the game on or before Tuesday this week. If you've already played, you are quite literally golden. The hammer should arrive via in-game mail on January 13.

"The community of raiders has helped shape this game from the very beginning, and their passion, feedback, and ingenuity continue to guide how we build, support, and grow this world for the long term," executive producer Aleksander Grøndal says in a press release.

GamesRadar+ recently spoke to Arc Raiders design lead Virgil Watkins and discussed this milestone. Asked if he feels more relief that the game is successful or more pressure from a huge audience, Watkins says it's "probably a bit of both."

"Of course it's encouraging that people are still finding the game compelling and diving in and bringing their friends in," Watkins says. "But yeah, obviously we sense the appetite is there, so it kind of gives us that nice push to keep building and keep doing stuff for them."

With the war chest from Arc Raiders, Watkins says Embark is "doing what we can to build up the team, or reorg the team to support areas. Now that we have some time since launch to present day, we can see what's working, what isn't, what players enjoy, what they might want to see improvements on. So yeah, it lets us get a very clear picture of where we should focus effort and new things we should invest in and things like that."

Watkins says he wasn't at ground zero on the hectic launch day himself, but the explosive release was felt across the team. Even after promising wishlist and beta test numbers, Arc Raiders caught them off guard.

"The way it took off, I think, took all of us by surprise. And the way it's done has taken us by surprise," he says, also referring to the long tail the game has seen since launch, sustaining high concurrent player numbers on Steam in particular. "Mostly it's, you know, you catch each other in the hall or in a meeting like, what is going on? This is ridiculous. Because of course we liked what we've done, and we think it's fun and stuff, but having this level of validation is pretty humbling."

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