I love Scrappy, but charging $10 for a new hat on a glorified menu in Arc Raiders doesn't sit right

Arc Raiders: Artwork for the new Leviathan bundle showing a close-up of a player in a divers helmet reloading on the left, and a player modelling the barnacle-covered backpack on the right.

(Image credit: Embark)

Scrappy, your resource-collecting rooster, might just be my favourite addition Arc Raiders makes to the extraction formula, cutting out much of the boring low-level material grind. Naturally, I'd like to reward his hard work with some new fits, say, a cool old diving helmet. Perhaps we could have matching outfits, even? Now that would be cool.

But that's where my heart immediately sank when I logged in to check the new store bundles—the first store refresh since launch. That new Scrappy diving helmet added in the new Deep Sea Bird set costs 900 raider tokens, and includes the Scrappy outfit, an emote, and a little charm. Thankfully, all of these items can also be purchased individually, but the cool helmet costs 700 tokens by itself. Either way you cut it, you need to purchase the 1,150 token pack for £7.79 to cover it.

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Arc Raiders: The Diver Helmet bundle for Scrappy in the store menu. — (Image credit: Embark)

Of course, you'll have tokens spare, but that's effectively £8 for an admittedly cute hat on a rooster that only appears in the main menu very briefly. It's not like you can interact with or even spin Scrappy around to see that JPEG hat in all its glory.

The obvious conclusion is that this bundle isn't for me—it's not meant for most people, really—but it's a shame, to say the least. It hurts more that there's a matching player outfit, the Leviathan bundle, that could have easily thrown in this Scrappy hat as a 'freebie'.

Arc Raiders: The Leviathan bundle modelled on a player in the store menu. — (Image credit: Embark)

This bundle already costs 1,600 tokens, so that's £11.68 if you're being economical, though I imagine most players will simply buy the 2,400 token bundle for £15.49 to maximise the bonus raider tokens the bigger the cash bundle you buy.

Given the brewing discontent I've already seen with the prices of the player cosmetic bundles that currently cost upwards of 2,400 raiders tokens (requiring you buy the matching £15.49 coin pack), charging almost half that for what's effectively menu customisation doesn't sit right.

Arc Raiders is one of the biggest surprise hits this year, and I'm more than happy to support it by purchasing cool cosmetics in the long term. But having an almost identical storefront to most free-to-play games, including Embark's own The Finals, isn't the best look for a game that isn't free-to-play.

Rory has made the fatal error of playing way too many live service games at once, and somehow still finding time for everything in between. Sure, he’s an expert at Destiny 2, Call of Duty, and more, but at what cost? He’s even sunk 1,000 hours into The Elder Scrolls Online over the years. At least he put all those hours spent grinding challenges to good use over the years as a freelancer and guides editor. In his spare time, he’s also an avid video creator, often breaking down the environmental design of his favourite games. If you can’t track him down, he’s probably lost in a cave with a bunch of dwarves shouting “rock and stone” to no end.

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