"The first dialog we had was obviously centered around [GTA 6]": Arc Raiders devs "did not want to be close" to Rockstar at launch, but were just fine challenging Call of Duty

After a late pivot to $40 premium pricing largely inspired by Helldivers 2, Arc Raiders developer Embark faced another quandary: should we delay this thing? Studio CEO and Battlefield veteran Patrick Söderlund says a few big games cast shadows over their planned launch, none bigger than Rockstar's GTA 6, which nobody "wanted to be close to".

Speaking with GamesBeat, Söderlund recalls discussions of when Arc Raiders should launch (thanks, PC Gamer). "When we spoke about whether we should move the game, the first dialog we had was obviously centered around GTA," he says.

"We did not want to be close to them. I don't think anyone wanted to be close to them. And we were waiting for them to announce when they were releasing, and once that became clear, we then felt we could build a date. We had a pretty reasonable hunch that Battlefield was coming around the time frame, we knew that Call of Duty was going to ship roughly when it did because it always does."

GTA 6 was, of course, delayed yet again last November, pushing it to November 2026.

The volume of former Battlefield talent at Embark adds a little wrinkle to this story, and Battlefield 6 largely outshining Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 in 2025 is that little hit of irony. Arc Raiders, which "intentionally" launched right between these two FPS monoliths, ended up running away with the end of the year, becoming the top-selling game on Steam for the holiday period.

"As we started to see more of Battlefield 6, we thought that looked good; we didn't see much of Call of Duty," Söderlund adds. "But at the end of the day, we felt that the game was ready to be launched."

Intentionally sandwiching Arc Raiders between two established giants like Battlefield and CoD may have worked to the game's favor, Söderlund reasons. (That $40 price tag probably helped, too.)

"We also believed that we could get to a place where we could be competitive in a different way," Söderlund says. "We, of course, didn't think it was a Battlefield in that way, but that the game had enough uniqueness that it could stand on its own legs.

"We felt that the game was offering something very different from what those other games were, and we also had very strong KPIs from our last technical test, and we did a final test of the game just before launch, which we called Server Slam, [that] gave us more data to feel comfortable with launching."

"What a ride": Arc Raiders just hit 12 million copies sold, analyst estimates, and set a new record for active players 2 months after launch.