Arc Raiders briefly overtakes Battlefield 6's concurrent player count on Steam as it proves to be one of the hottest PC games this fall

Arc Raiders loot guide: Three raiders standing shoulder to shoulder in Buried City. The one of the left is reaching for something in their pocket, the character in the middle, wearing an astronaut helmet, is casually looking up, while the one on the right in cowboy attire is aiming their pistol.

(Image credit: Embark)

I've tried my hand at an extraction shooter here and there. They tend to be ludicrously hardcore and punishing, and I say this as a sucker with thousands of hours across every MOBA I can get my grubby little hands on. It seems like Arc Raiders has successfully bridged the gap between the sickos and the rest of us, though, as not only is it the extraction shooter of choice for the chronically employed—it's one of the biggest games on Steam.

According to SteamDB, the game is off to a screaming start, just hitting a peak concurrent player count of over 354,000 Friday night. That's a wild number for any shooter, especially given that the game only released a little over a week ago. It even briefly overtook Battlefield 6, one of the biggest games on Steam in general right now, with BF6 settling in at around 318,000 players around midnight UTC Saturday morning and Arc Raiders sneaking past it with over 329,000.

As for why, Arc Raiders has a lot going for it. Like BF6, it runs like a dream and doesn't require a monster rig, which will always be an easier sell than bleeding edge visuals. It's also, like I mentioned before, not as eager to push you down the stairs and laugh as you collide with every step as a game like Escape From Tarkov might be. PC Gamer news writer Elie Gould's review put it succinctly: "finally, a less stressful extraction shooter."

Justin first became enamored with PC gaming when World of Warcraft and Neverwinter Nights 2 rewired his brain as a wide-eyed kid. As time has passed, he's amassed a hefty backlog of retro shooters, CRPGs, and janky '90s esoterica. Whether he's extolling the virtues of Shenmue or troubleshooting some fiddly old MMO, it's hard to get his mind off games with more ambition than scruples. When he's not at his keyboard, he's probably birdwatching or daydreaming about a glorious comeback for real-time with pause combat. Any day now...

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