Arc Raiders surpassed 700,000 concurrent players across all platforms this weekend, and you better believe that most of them were on PC

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

The past weekend was a big weekend for Arc Raiders, which Embark Studios says surpassed 700,000 concurrent players across all platforms.

"It's been a little over one week since we opened up the tunnels for you to head Topside, and this past weekend we reached over 700,000 concurrent Raiders on the surface!" Embark wrote on X.

Hey Raiders!It's been a little over one week since we opened up the tunnels for you to head Topside, and this past weekend we reached over 700,000 concurrent Raiders on the surface! &#129395;We're so happy to have you all here!The many different ways you play and participate in ARC Raiders have completely blown us away, going far beyond what we ever imagined. You surprise us, you outsmart us, and you keep us on our toes. We wouldn&rsquo;t have it any other way.The point being, you all push us to be better, and we&rsquo;re truly grateful to have you along for this journey.With love,The ARC Raiders Team &#129782; — (Image credit: Embark Studios (Twitter))

The remark about "the many different ways" people are playing Arc rings true too, even if it's perhaps laced with a little bit of irony. Arc Raiders is a PvPvE game, but there's surprisingly little PvP to it, at least in solo queues. In my roughly 12 hours of play, I've only been killed by other players two, maybe three times at most.

Far more representative of my experience is an encounter I had last night: Two guys held an elevator for me as I was walking by, and I joined them and left the map sooner than I'd intended just because I didn't want to be rude. Fight-on-sight types might not be impressed, but that kind of interaction is something I genuinely love about Arc Raiders, and not just because I'm bad at PvP: Putting your trust in a complete stranger packing an automatic weapon and getting away with a safe escape instead of a brace of bullets in your back is exhilarating.

As a loyal and right-thinking PC gamer, Embark's concurrent player post also compels me to point out how PC-dependent that audience is. Roughly two-thirds of the Arc Raiders player base, and possibly more, comes from the mouse-and-keyboard set: While Embark didn't say exactly when over the weekend the game broke 700,000 concurrents, it's reasonable to guess that it happened around the time it surpassed 462,000 concurrent players on Steam alone. Add to that whatever number of players were Arc Raiding from the Epic Games Store—like Sony and Microsoft, Epic doesn't share player numbers—and you've got a whole lot of PC gamers playing Arc Raiders, far more than PS5 and Xbox combined. Maybe that's why everyone is so nice.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

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