Wardogs, we learned from the new trailer that dropped during today's Future Games Show, is not a battle royale. It is also not an extraction shooter. So... what is it? The video does eventually get to that part: It's an "all-out warfare" FPS for up to 100 players.

The trailer looks pretty straightforward as these things go, with chaotic first-person gameplay and light vehicle simulation that evokes thoughts of Call of Duty or Battlefield. The big difference is that Wardogs is built around a single game mode inspired by King of the Hill that pits three teams against each other for control of randomized zones within a larger-scale map. Each zone has varying conditions and challenges, so every match—in theory at least—is different.

Wardogs also aims to actively encourage teamplay by offering in-game monetary rewards for specific actions—not just controlling objectives (although you're definitely getting paid for doing that) but also things like reviving teammates or transporting friendlies. The cash you earn can be spent on a range of loadouts and vehicles with each new life, and it also persists from match to match, meaning you can save up for a big spend at a crucial moment—and that you might be a little stuck if you're having a bad run.

The big hook, though, is that Wardogs is "100% player driven," with an emphasis on letting players do what they want within the confines of the map. "There's no one way to play, earn and progress," the Steam page says. "Instead, Wardogs gives players the freedom to take on the Control Zone in any number of ways. Whether you're a lone wolf helping out your team or part of a dedicated squad, how you approach the battlefield is entirely up to you.

"There are no set rules of engagement. It's ultimately your choice how you want to approach the battlefield."

It looks pretty good: I enjoy modern military shooters as much as the next guy but tend not to play them online because, frankly, I suck. Being able to come at it in a more open-ended setting and maybe find an approach that fits my aging reflexes has appeal.

Wardogs is set to launch into early access later this year. If you want to jump into playtesting ahead of that, you can sign up at wardogs.com.

DMZ is coming back.

The Call of Duty extraction mode, which debuted in Modern Warfare 2 (2022), will have another go-around when Modern Warfare 4 releases in October. DMZ was among the first big-budget attempts at the extraction genre—three years before Arc Raiders became a phenomenon.

Activision is not talking in detail about the new DMZ, but provided a top level description to press:

"DMZ is the definitive Call of Duty extraction experience, a living combat sandbox where every deployment is a new story. Deploy solo or with a squad into a volatile conflict zone as an off-the-books asset tasked with recovering advanced military technology left in the wake of war. The conditions in the exclusion zone are always shifting, with changing weather, dynamic military objectives, and hostile forces moving throughout the zone. 

"Loot, fight, negotiate, betray, and extract with whatever you can carry. The harder you push, the harder the world pushes back. Every run is a risk, every encounter is a choice, and no two deployments play out the same way."

Not much to be gleaned from that other than "yep, sounds like an extraction shooter," though talk of being an "off the books asset" does make it sound thematically consistent with Escape From Tarkov.

The original DMZ had familiar elements of extraction shooters—gear fear, proximity chat, backpacks, contracts—but was criticized for lacking depth. It was casual, but bland, and you could tell it was more of an offshoot of Warzone than its own game. Infinity Ward supported DMZ with updates throughout 2023, but ultimately retired the mode, calling it a successful beta.

We do know a bit more about Modern Warfare 4's multiplayer, which I played at the Infinity Ward offices last week. It's not surprising, but Infinity Ward still makes the best Call of Duty guns.

Marathon's second season is just days away from kicking off, and amid all the changes and hype its devs are spreading the word that its first week will be free to play for those prospective players who've been too stingy to try it out so far (me).

"Season 2 begins on June 2 and kicks off with an Open Play Week from June 2 to June 9," a blog post explains. "During the Open Play Week, the full game will be available to play on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and any progress you make will carry over into Season 2. This will be a great time to invite your friends to crew up as everyone will be starting out on a clean slate." All you have to bring is internet access which requires a paid-for subscription on console (classic).

If you do decide to make the jump then waiting for you will be pure chaos in season 2 by the sound of things. "The narrative theme of season 2 is escalation. The UESC is tired of getting pushed around by the runners and they're fighting back," Nick Ardizzone, associate narrative director, says in a dev diary. "As their opposition escalates, so too does the anomaly. One of your jobs is to find out why."

Alongside this narrative shift players will be able to find new places of interest, housing high level loot like the Observation science deck where UESC has been studying the anomaly. And will also experience "Psychosis" and "hallucinations" as this pitch black map begins to mess you up—you do get a flashlight though, so not all is lost.

Season 2 also comes with a bunch of resets, changes, and additions. There's two new guns: the D54 Battle Pistol with an integrated retina optic and the KKV, a small arms SMG with an integrated suppressor that's apparently "excellent at mowing down anything immediately right in front of you". Honestly, that last one may be enough on its own to convince me to try Marathon's second season out.

All of these changes and additions are to ensure everyone "gets this fresh start and they have the chance to go back through that journey from zero to hero," Emanuel Rosu, production director, explains.

"The seasonal reset allows us to change the journey of the things that you're going to care about," Brenton Woodrow, senior design lead, adds. "When a player starts a new season I want them to feel like we've been able to recapture the magic of week one of Marathon's launch. Everything's new, you don't know what's valuable yet, that feel of discovery is going to be exciting and push you to new stories and new journeys along your seasonal progression."

Marathon is a game about loss, though not in the traditional PlayStation Studios fashion. There are no sad dads on Tau Ceti IV, unless you count the various corporate AIs still pining after the failed colony they funded. Rather, Marathon is about the potential for loss—the furrowing fear that sits on your brow every time you pick up a blue shield or a biolens seed. Obviously, you don’t know what a biolens seed is—nobody does. But you heard the shimmering sound it made when it hit your backpack, noted the four slots it swallowed in your inventory, and decided on some level that it was your duty to usher the seed out of dodge.

Now even the tiniest decision is coloured by the purple rarity item on your shoulder. Is opening fire on a rival in the best interests of the seed? Would the seed be placed in danger if you broke this window, rather than finding a quieter route? What precise set of risk equations might allow you to safeguard the seed, which you’re absolutely sure will prove crucial to some undetermined future upgrade?

Yet that powerful sense of responsibility for your gear has turned out to be something that Bungie will compromise on. As part of a wave of tweaks to make Marathon a tad friendlier, the studio has introduced a time-limited Free Kit Frenzy mode. There, everybody beams into Dire Marsh with an inventory made up of low-level weapons, healing items and ammo. There’s no option to bring in equipment you already own, which eliminates any element of upfront risk. And since everybody else is using free kits too, you know you’re not going to be wiped out by a team dressed in gold gear fresh from Cryo Archive.

On the face of it, this experiment would appear to bring Marathon closer to the rhythms of battle royale. After all, there’s little point in caution in the opening minutes of a match when you’ve nothing to lose. Aggressive looting might bag you a slightly upgraded gun or, wonder of wonders, a shield—both significant advantages when every other player has spawned with a popgun and a prayer. In the scramble for a competitive edge, stealth takes a backseat.

That said, I’ve seen teams in Free Kit Frenzy fall foul of a familiar Marathon stumbling block: underestimating the clankers. Even at the best of times, Tau Ceti’s permanent population of grumbling robots present a stern challenge to an uncoordinated team. And when that team is armed with weak gear, it’s all too easy to bite off more bot than you can chew.

While chasing down a contract, I showed up at the Marsh’s notorious repair bay area, Maintenance, to fight a UESC commander. Only, I found the commander was already dead—alongside the three players who’d picked a fight with them. I scooped up my objective from the debris, and smiled at Marathon’s capacity for live environmental storytelling.

In theory, Free Kit Frenzy is a useful arena for the completion of some of Marathon’s gnarlier contracts—in particular, the loud ones. When Marathon mandates that you get into PvE combat, it’s basically asking that you signal your exact location to other players on the map, inviting opportunistic snipers or cloaked ambushers. But tackling such missions in Free Kit Frenzy could perhaps take the sting out of such encounters. With all your own gear safely tucked in your Vault, there’d be no pain, only gain.

Several frenzied and free hours later, however, I’d say that idea hasn’t completely borne out. I’ve certainly managed to complete some significant contracts, but only with a hefty dose of patience—which I think we can all agree is a sister to pain anyway. More than once, I’ve got halfway to finishing a quest only to watch my partners veer from the goal—tempted by the prospect of a messy teamfight. With little to lose, there’s much less hesitation in the air. Players are eager to get into scraps at the expense of whatever they might have been doing beforehand.

One dying teammate chuckled as I fruitlessly finished off an opponent in the Marsh’s quarantine zone, dooming myself to death by machine gun fire in the process. “At least you got him! Well done.” It’s a tone of carefree abandon I’ve never previously associated with Marathon.

At the same time, I’ve witnessed a drastic decrease in team bonding. Outside of Free Kit Frenzy, the Marathon community is often collaborative and helpful. Everyone is vaguely aware that the wellbeing of the players they’re matchmade with has a significant bearing on their own. Strangers tend to stick together, defend one another, get on the same page, and most importantly, ping those bloody awful toxic plants that strip the HP from your bones.

That’s much less the case within the bounds of Bungie’s new social experiment. Once players are killed, they don’t tend to wait around for a revive—instead disconnecting immediately to start a fresh round (a very battle royale behaviour). Their personal investment in a match is lower, and thus their investment in the team is weaker too. You can hardly blame them—though naturally I do, in the moments when I’m left alone, with the thunder of enemy foodsteps filling my headphones.

There have definitely been points where I’m grateful to have Free Kit Frenzy in rotation. After a brutal loss, it’s an appealing option that negates the need for more extreme measures like ‘processing feelings’ or ‘touching grass’.

Still: a part of me wonders whether this new mode has given me a comfort I ought not to have. As a level 40 player, now hoarding shields and stuffing my wallet with excess credits, I’m relying on Bungie to keep my hubris in check. Part of my role, now, is to be the whale that a newer player harpoons. The piñata they’re sometimes lucky enough to crack open, gasping with delight as they rip out my fancy implants. In that context, being able to leave my kit at home for 50% of my runs seems somehow against the spirit of the game.

In fact, one of the pitfalls of Free Kit Frenzy is that, very often, there are no piñatas. Some of my most lucrative Marathon runs have come from the winnings of a kitted-up player's backpack—the rewards proportional to the risk. Free kit fights are fairer, but when the prize is typically the same gun I'm holding plus a few med kits, I actually have fewer interesting reasons to open fire. Asymmetry is what makes an extraction shooter distinct from a deathmatch with an off ramp.

Evidently, Bungie is wary of compromising the core appeal of Marathon. That’ll be why Free Kit Frenzy is temporary, and limited to a single map. The studio will be analysing feedback, and there’s every chance this very article will become a data point. In which case, Bungie: please take care in diluting the wide-eyed electricity of Marathon; the crackling atmosphere you’ve conjured, rooted fundamentally in fear.

More than anything, Free Kit Frenzy feels like a safe out. And as anyone who’s ever been jumped during exfil can tell you, a safe out is not quite Marathon.

Fragmentary Order is the upcoming hardcore sci-fi extraction shooter led by Escape from Tarkov's creator, Nikita Buyanov—he's still working on Tarkov at Battlestate Games, though. But the extraction shooter has changed (in large part due to Arc Raiders) since Tarkov's eight-year beta period beginning in 2016, and even its full 1.0 release at the end of 2025. There's more of an appetite for the genre now than ever, at least for a more casual spin on it. Sure, you'll still lose loot when you die, but most matches in Arc Raiders devolve into making friends with other players.

Buyanov says no to all that. When asked by GamesBeat whether the emergent gameplay of Arc Raiders has given the team any inspiration, Buyanov plainly stated: "It’s an extraction shooter for casual people. It’s not an option for us. We want to have the most painful, most challenging, and most rewarding experience."

In other words, if it's taking inspiration from anywhere, it's Buyanov's experience with Tarkov. You could argue there's even a hint of Marathon's all-or-nothing approach, which balances huge challenges with satisfying rewards—look no further than the intense Cryo Archive map.

However, he's not ruling out the occasional friendliness. "You can try. That’s your call. But we’re trying to simulate reality. Tarkov is the same," he explains. "You’ll have a lot to do, and not just fighting people. You’ll need to survive dynamic events in the location. You might need to work with others to find shelter. We won’t force people to fight. But people will fight."

Evidently, Fragmentary Order won't be a walk in the park, saying hello to everyone you meet like Arc Raiders—and that's not a dig, I'd argue it's the best part of Embark's extraction shooter. All I hope is that it takes a page out of the Arc Raiders and Marathon playbook and streamlines core systems like inventory management and looting to keep the focus on the most interesting aspects: shooting things and creeping around a detailed map.

In the year 2022, PC Gamer's Morgan Park asked if the then-pre-release extraction shooter Marauders could "dethrone Escape From Tarkov with dieselpunk spaceships and impeccable vibes." The answer, we would later learn, was "no."

Marauders launched into early access in October 2022 and came out of the gate with impressive concurrent player numbers on Steam, particularly given that it's not a free to play game. But updates came to a halt in August 2024 with the launch of the Retribution update, and the early access notice on Steam now carries a warning that the game hasn't been updated for more than 20 months.

Well you can reset that timer, baby, because it turns out that Marauders isn't quite as dead as it appeared. A "production update" posted today says developers have been "fully focused on the game" all this time, and that "what started as a round of fixes grew into a much larger, necessary change and we have made the call to commit to it rather than push smaller updates in the meantime."

"We've been reworking core systems and rebuilding mechanics that needed it," developer Small Impact Games wrote. "This isn't a patch. It's a full overhaul aimed at getting Marauders where it should be."

Which is cool, except, well, they seem to have forgotten to tell anyone about it. In fact, publisher Team17 seemed to imply in 2025 that the game had been abandoned, telling redditor Rasangus that active development of the game had stopped.

The whole thing is a bit strange—which isn't meant to suggest impropriety, just that it's weird for a game to suddenly pop back to life like this after two years of silence—but the reaction is, frankly, more positive than I'd expect. Naturally there's plenty of "let it die" commentary in the replies on Steam, but a good number of followers are excited at the prospect of Marauder's return, too. If nothing else, 11 pages of responses (and counting) just a few hours after the update was posted indicates to me that, yes, there is still some real interest here.

And maybe for good reason. No doubt a lot has changed since Morgan checked out Marauders in 2022, but even then he saw potential: "There's not a lot to it in this closed beta build, a fact that may sway the Tarkov faithfuls from committing to it for now, but Marauders definitely has it beat in theming and approachability."

What this ultimately adds up to is impossible to say, and I certainly wouldn't recommend dropping $30 on an early access game with a development roadmap on Steam that ends in "late 2023." There's also no getting around the fact that the extraction shooter milieu is even more crowded and tougher now than it was when the game went silent: Neither Arc Raiders nor Marathon were on the scene at that point.

But if Marauders really is back in active development (or, I suppose, if development has been ongoing all along and they just lost track of time), I think it'll be one worth keeping an eye on.

Gunzilla, the game studio behind extraction shooter Off The Grid and the revival of magazine Game Informer, recently faced allegations that it has failed to pay contractors on time. Speaking under the condition of anonymity, new sources with knowledge of the company's dealings have told PC Gamer that its problems with paying are widespread, and in one case include an unpaid bill of over $100,000.

Gunzilla CEO Vlad Korolev downplayed the previous claims about unpaid workers, saying in a statement posted to X that salaries of the studio's "full-time official employees ... have never been delayed by more than a week."

But according to a source at the company, Gunzilla relies heavily on contractors rather than "full-time official employees," particularly in its Ukraine office, which accounts for more than half the studio's workforce. The source alleges that many of the contractors in Ukraine and other parts of the world have gone without pay since 2025.

Even high-level roles may be contract positions. Anna Savina, whose complaints about being unpaid for several months inspired others to speak up, held a full-time role as Gunzilla's head of talent acquisition, but was nonetheless apparently a contract worker: After Korolev, the Gunzilla CEO, said that "one of the loudest voices—a contractor who finished working with us just a week ago—was repaid immediately," Savina, whose employment at Gunzilla ended earlier this month, reported that she'd been paid in full.

Gunzilla also owes money to at least one company it contracted work from. According to sources familiar with the matter, a marketing company contracted by Gunzilla in 2024 is currently owed more than $100,000 for services rendered; Gunzilla has allegedly made multiple promises to pay through 2026, including a formal letter of commitment, but no payments have been forthcoming.

The source said that Gunzilla's failure to pay wasn't a sudden change in the working relationship between the two companies, but that it had never paid any invoices. The company in question began issuing warnings about failure to pay in spring 2025 and sent a formal demand letter for payment at the end of that year, but thus far has still received nothing.

Gunzilla has also been the subject of legal actions over its failure to pay other partners. The company's UK division is currently the subject of an active "winding-up petition," an application to the courts to wind up—ie, liquidate and close—a company that can't or won't pay its debts, filed by The Vertex Guild, an asset development studio. A second such petition was filed against Gunzilla by HM Revenue and Customs, the UK's tax and customs authority, supported by PC Gamer publisher Future Plc, but was withdrawn in March 2026 after Gunzilla paid Future's bill in full.

More Gunzilla contractors have also begun speaking out about their experiences with the studio. Technical animator Akhil Chinnabathini said he's gone six months without pay, largely on the promises of Korolev, who allegedly told employees during a January meeting that "everything was fine" and everyone would be paid.

"The anxiety this has caused is something I wouldn't wish on anyone," Chinnabathini wrote. "I let my family down, I made promises I couldn't keep, not because I didn't work for it, but because the people responsible for paying me simply chose not to.

"This isn't just about money anymore. It's about accountability, basic human dignity, trust and the damage that's done when leadership stays silent while employees suffer."

Marko Dijan, a lighting artist whose LinkedIn page indicates a nearly two-year run with Gunzilla through 2024-25, said he has three outstanding invoices dating back to August 2025. Dijan has "received several assurances that payment was coming soon," he wrote, but none were received; he was prompted to post his story after seeing Korolev's public statement about "haters" seeking to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

"That doesn't match my experience, as those concerns are raised by other contractors who are in the same situation as I am," Dijan wrote. "When I commented on the CEO's post to clarify that my invoices are still outstanding, my comment was removed, and I was blocked. That action tells you everything."

We reached out to Gunzilla for comment, but did not receive a response prior to press time.

Marathon's had a few experimental matchmaking options since launch, namely a duos queue so you and a buddy can scavenger without a tag-along. After the success of this experiment, Bungie's making duos a permanent fixture in Season 2. And with that, testing something else in the labs: 'free kit frenzy', running from now until Wednesday, 29 April.

Bungie's aim with this experiment is to find out more about "the early gear system", since players are forced to enter with a free sponsored kit, using what they find during the match to get by and extract. In other words, it's basically a battle royale mode. Any loot you manage to escape with you can use in the main mode, but you can't bring it back into the next free kit frenzy match. It's a great opportunity to grab gear for the standard mode or complete contracts more peacefully.

What's most interesting is that this test, which was just meant to give Bungie some data on looting and gear, has been remarkably successful so far. "Dire Marsh sponsored [queue] is sick…Everyone seems to be in the same place, and even losing isn't as frustrating", one player said in a Reddit post, which is overflowing with further support for the mode in the comments: "Really do hope they keep this mode in".

Free kit que might be the most fun I've had so far in Marathon from r/Marathon

One of the biggest advantages of this mode is that there are a lot fewer snipers, shotguns, and bubble shields in use, which have been met with their fair share of hatred since launch. And if you do find one, you've got to make the most of it because you won't be bringing it to the next free kit frenzy match anyhow.

Honestly, it's funny that this test has ended up quickly morphing into players hoping the experimental playlist stays, effectively adding a permanent battle royale. Bungie's decision to make it an extraction shooter, especially one so hardcore, has been controversial ever since it was announced, resulting in Marathon being its own worst enemy. The success of this test suggests that there's at least room for Marathon to be an extraction shooter while also accommodating a more lax, battle royale crowd.

Coinciding with the free kit frenzy experiment, Marathon's mid-season patch launched yesterday, buffing Recon, giving everyone a Mercy Kit to revive strangers, and even adding a bunch of unique weapons.

Marathon has been out for just over a month now, and it's been great. It's basically exactly what I wanted it to be: a PvP-focused extraction shooter with Bungie's signature gunplay and knack for visual flair. I've been having an absolute blast with it since launch, and it's a nice counterbalance to Arc Raiders' more social-sim approach. But there's been all this talk about player counts, and how Marathon isn't taking off in the same way as Arc Raiders has.

And it makes sense: it's true. Marathon isn't the next big thing. Marathon's 88,000 concurrent player peak on Steam at launch was pretty respectable, but the daily rates have decreased to a little over 20,000 concurrents by now. Compare that to Arc Raiders, which is still reaching well over 100,000 concurrents on Steam even on a bad day months after launch.

However, without knowing what Bungie and Sony consider a success (and in what timeframe) after the years of development time and money invested into Marathon, it's basically impossible to confirm whether its performance is 'enough' for either team so far. Though I'd wager that the current baseline probably is below expectations for a new Bungie FPS after Sony spent $3.6 billion acquiring the studio and reports that Marathon cost over $200 million. That's quite an uphill battle.

The thing is, it's immediately obvious that Marathon was never going to be the next big thing, and I'd like to think Bungie and Sony would know as much too. Marathon is a niche within a niche.

Don't forget, outside of Arc Raiders, extraction shooters are still a niche—look at Escape from Tarkov, Hunt: Showdown, Grey Zone Warfare, and so on. You'll see relatively small but active communities in it for the long haul, with slow growth.

While Arc Raiders cast a wide net, emphasising PvE, collaboration, and stumbling into social-sim-like interactions, Marathon is through and through an unforgiving PvP extraction shooter. You will die often, and you will lose all your loot. There's no safe pocket to hang on to salvage even a little progress on a failed run. And yes, all your progress is wiped at the end of a three-month season.

Doubling down, Bungie's post-launch plans kicked off with a highly competitive Ranked mode and Cryo Archive, one of the most intense, hardcore pieces of content I've seen in any game ever. Neither mode is helped by it being in a high-stakes extraction shooter.

It's almost as if Bungie didn't look at the engagement numbers for Destiny's endgame content, or just didn't care; challenging, communication-driven raids are superb, but they're built for a minority of players. Marathon's that age-old predicament turned into a big-budget game.

At its core, Marathon is not a game designed for most people. From an active player's perspective, you know what? I love how niche and hyper-specific Marathon is. It's built for a certain type of person, and if you fit the bill, you'll adore it. We need more games dedicated to one, very particular vision. Of course, that inherently limits the potential audience, and I'd be baffled if those in charge of all the macro and microscopic designs that led us here didn't consider how that would play into its success.

Bungie's stated it's in it for the long haul, but what worries me is that Sony has shown time and time again that it's not willing to settle for anything less than perfection when it comes to its live-service ambitions. That's to say, it's since scaled back most of its plans, pulling the plug on released and unrealised games with little hesitation.

Does Marathon meet Sony's targets? Who knows. Developing a niche extraction shooter with a AAA budget sure was an interesting start, though. But Marathon is an excellent shooter, and it's exactly the type of game that could sustain a small but devout player base in the long term if the powers that be let it. The developers have been very reactive to feedback post-launch, and I'm sure there's some great content lined up in future seasons to build on what's here. You could say it's a marathon, not a sprint.

For once, Sony has to prove it's willing to actually stick with a project. And if Sony's not going to stand by it, then what was the point of acquiring Bungie and letting it continue down this path for years?

In the wake of severe layoffs last month, Epic's increasingly looking to the House of Mouse to shore up its flagging fortunes, per a recent report from Bloomberg.

At the time of the layoffs, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney wrote that the company was "spending significantly more" than it was making thanks to a slump in engagement with Fortnite—far and away Epic's chief money-printing instrument—since 2025. "Despite Fortnite remaining one of the most successful games in the world, we've had challenges delivering consistent Fortnite magic with every season," wrote Sweeney.

But Sweeney and other Epic direction-setters hope Mickey can sort it, it seems. Disney's $1.5 billion investment in Epic two years ago will bear its first fruit in November, in the form of a Disney-themed extraction shooter starring the corporation's characters. Which sounds like a great way to get a lot more videos of Goofy melodramatically buying the farm, so I'm all in favour.

Per Bloomberg's unnamed sources, internal responses to the game have been, ah, a little underwhelming. In particular, there are concerns at the company that the game's mechanics might not be the most original, though Epic's senior director of global communications Liz Markman has come out and said that Bloomberg's description of the situation is "not reflective of the ambitions of the Disney collaboration. We are building a new games and entertainment universe of Disney experiences."

I've reached out to Epic to ask about all this, and will update if I hear back.

But whether Epic staff love Call of Goofy: Warzone* or not, it's not the only Disney-shaped basket the company's putting its eggs in. The extraction shooter is tipped to be the first Disney/Epic collab to break cover, but Epic is geared up to produce at least two more after that. No details on those, though, save that the second game has apparently also earned tepid internal reviews.

Me? I'm not sure how much room the world has left for more extraction shooters, but I will also cop to the fact that—as a rapidly ageing millennial man who spends most of his time thinking about how good Uplink was—I am perhaps as far away from the target audience of a Disney extraction shooter as its possible to be. I'm certainly ready for a deluge of clips of Winnie the Pooh execution moves, though, so put me down as a tentative 'aye'.

*Probably not the actual title. It should be.

Extraction shooters seem to be all the rage right now, what with Arc Raiders still going strong almost five months after launch, and Marathon hot off the presses. Well, the genre's a hit in theory anyway, as Arc Raiders is really the only extraction shooter to break into the mainstream—even Bungie's stab at it, while excellent, still hasn't exploded into a full-scale phenomenon.

That brings us to The Cube, Save Us, a post-apocalyptic extraction shooter developed by XLGames, which—just three weeks after it launched—has announced it's shutting down.

The developer explains that while The Cube, Save Us "started with a lot of support and affection" from players, it will "have its end of the story" as it officially closes a month from now, on May 8. So you've got some time to check it out, at least for the sake of curiosity.

"We once again thank our Raiders who have loved The Cube, Save Us, and we will never forget the memories and experiences we have shared together."

The Cube, Save Us debuted to a 5,177 concurrent player peak on Steam on March 18, which quickly dwindled into the hundreds just days later—bad news for a free-to-play game.

It's also sitting at 'mostly negative' Steam reviews, so that certainly wasn't giving any would-be players a strong first impression. In fact, a player with over 160 hours in the game called it 'trash' and a 'complete cash grab', though I do question how long it took them to reach that conclusion.

On that note, full refunds will be issued for players who spent anything on the game.

When I first heard The Cube, Save Us was closing down (via Delisted Games), my mind immediately jumped to The Cube, the MMO RPG made by Atomic Heart developer Mundfish. While I remain very sceptical about that project, it's a completely different game. The jury's still out on that one.

//Body

There has been a lot of discussion about player counts in 2026, usually in a negative context. The ill-fated Highguard's dwindling player count was almost treated like a spectator sport, and you'd think some people are willing Marathon to fail the way they obsess over its concurrents.

Among all this, it's edifying to discuss player numbers in a positive way. Military extraction shooter Gray Zone Warfare released its major 'Spearhead' update at the end of March, and it appears to have given the FPS a new lease of life. Following the update, developer Madfinger Games says player numbers have increased by more than 1000%.

"Players are coming back, and they have a lot to say about how the game feels now," Madfinger wrote in a Steam post. "Spearhead has already been described as a new beginning for Gray Zone Warfare."

Madfinger says that, following the update, monthly peak players increased by 1076%, with peak daily active players reaching 126,600 and peak concurrent users at 30,954. It seems the trend has continued since Madfinger posted these stats too. At the time of writing, concurrent players are at 35,275 according to SteamDB after reaching a 24-hour peak of 43,770.

Those are certainly strong numbers. But more important is why the Spearhead update has brought players back. The reasons are myriad, but it boils down to the fact that the changes are many and extensive, touching virtually every aspect of the game.

For starters, Spearhead adds a lot more for players to do, folding in 100 new tasks and contracts to complete, while also updating 50 existing tasks. But it also overhauls the tasks system to make Gray Zone Warfare more replayable. Tasks now feature puzzles and different world interactions, can be completed any time of day, and favour monetary rewards rather than specific items, giving players greater freedom to customise their loadouts.

Madfinger also says it has made Gray Zone Warfare's AI more human and less robotic. NPC shooting is less precise at distance, meaning you're less likely to be insta-killed from across the map. AI is also less adept at tracking player positions and reacting to sounds.

The changes go much further than this, too. Character movement has been upgraded with better jumping, sprinting and falling. AI reactions to being shot have been enhanced to be more readable and make combat more dynamic. It also adds 25 new world locations, 8 new weapons, new factions, bosses, and 150 new gear pieces.

It's an impressive array of additions. And it's worth noting that Gray Zone Warfare is still a long way from being finished, with this update only bringing the early access game to version 0.4. If Spearhead has you tempted to check out Gray Zone Warfare, it's currently a third off at $26.79 (£23.44). That discount ends on April 9.

Sand: Raiders of Sophie, the PvPvE extraction shooter where you build and drive huge stompy mechanical bases around on a desert planet, "will not be releasing this March" as planned, developer Hologryph announced today.

"It’s been a difficult few months for us here in Ukraine," the developer wrote in a Steam post, "with frequent severe power outages and air alert disruptions causing some major complications and resulting in a lot of key features that we had hoped to have finalised and implemented at this stage being behind schedule."

A delay isn't a huge surprise: as we approached the end of the month, fans in the official Sand Discord were getting anxious that a specific release date hadn't been announced, with server mods being noncommittal about a release happening at all.

"We appreciate that this isn’t the news you wanted to hear but assure you that this delay is purely in the interest of delivering you all the best SAND experience possible on launch," the developer said.

The developers listed features that still need work before launch, like improvements to PvE mobs, server physics and performance, anti-cheat, and a larger arsenal, while also saying they plan to use the extra development time to add some features based on playtest feedback.

No new release date has been announced, though the developer said it will "shortly release another development update with updates on our progress and details of a server slam we plan to hold in the interim that we hope to see many of you join us for."

Somehow it's already the end of March, and as the growing stack of upcoming 2026 games climbs ever taller, we're rubbing our hands gleefully together at all the cool stuff we'll be playing over the next several months.

But hold up. We're not quite done with March, yet Sand: Raiders of Sophie, the cool-looking PvPvE extraction shooter where you build, customize, and drive a huge stompy mechanical base across an alien planet, is due out this month. "March 2026" is the release date listed on Steam, but as I noted a moment ago, we're running out of March, and a specific date has yet to be announced.

I'm not the only one wondering if the multiplayer shooter is still on track. Sift through Sand's Discord and you'll wind up with double handfuls of "When?" Is Sand still coming out in March? If so, on what day? And the more dreaded question: is the reason we haven't heard a date yet because it's been delayed?

Under the bombardment of release date questions, community managers in the official Discord are doing their best to give hopeful players some information—but that's tricky when there isn't any information to give out at the moment.

"We want to assure you that you're not being overlooked," tinybuild Discord manager Jacky said in a post that has been pinned to the channel. "We're really sorry we can't share a specific date and time for the launch just yet, but we promise to keep you updated."

"There are lots of wheels spinning at the moment, and a lot of things on the development side that need to fall into place before I'm given the go ahead to share concrete info," said senior community manager TinyJay. "I understand that this is frustrating for you all but I don't have control over development related matters and of course, development does impact what we can share and when we can share it."

One member of the Discord speculated that the issue might be that Sand's development team are working out a few final, critical details, and don't want to announce a date until they're absolutely sure they won't then have to disappoint fans by then missing that date.

"Exactly this, and that a firm announcement is dependent on this final stretch of work," CM TinyJay said in response.

So, there you have it. A specific March release date for Sand hasn't been confirmed, but it also hasn't been denied. Let's just call it Schrödinger's Release Date and accept that we can't open that box just yet. I've inquired myself with TinyBuild, and will let you know if I hear anything back, but in the meantime, stay calm, let the devs work, and don't give the community managers too hard of a time. Yes, we're getting close to the end of the month—but there's still a bit of March left.

Last night, during what has become an unhealthy habit of solo Marathon runs before bed, I had a run-in that exemplified everything I love and kinda hate about extraction shooters.

I spawned at South Relay on Perimeter with the simple goal of making some dough. I cruised into the main building, went up some stairs, and that's when I heard another player opening a door on the other side of the building. Since activating another door or doing anything else would make enough noise to potentially give me away, I decided to stop and wait until they eventually strolled into my room, then blast 'em.

Except, they didn't show up. Three minutes went by. I could hear them looting valuables, knifing UESC bots, and even hacking the wall-mounted vault that sometimes spawns in the back rooms of South Relay. As I stared blankly at a wall, I pondered what goodies they just found in that vault, if their heart rate shot up at the sight of a purple valuable or gold mod—whatever it was, I imagined it would soon be mine.

As their boots clunked around further, I thought about how good Marathon's sound propagation is that I can tell almost exactly where in the adjacent room they're standing.

Below: The "fight", but sped up.

They kept fussing around with their inventory, picking up everything that wasn't nailed down in the entire complex except for the single stairwell/bathroom landing I'd made a temporary home. They'd stop moving for a while, then start clunking again. More backpack rummaging. All the while, I'm staring at a wall.

Nearly five minutes into the showdown that only one of us was aware was happening, my patience was wearing thin, my anxiety skyrocketed, and worst of all, I began to feel ridiculous. Am I a coward for camping this room instead of just instigating a normal fight? What if they've spent all this time gearing up with better guns and shields than what I've got, and my ambush plan proves to be the very thing that gets me killed? How personally humiliating will it feel if I finally face this guy and lose?

For the life of me, I couldn't understand what my rival was still doing in this one building. Surely they'd picked up everything worth having. I noticed that the little bathroom attached to this landing had a vent, and that vent lead directly to the room I suspected they were hiding in. I couldn't enter it without bashing the grate in first and making a bunch of noise, so nothing to do about that yet. They'd stopped moving almost entirely now, and I had to assume they'd gotten comfortable knowing they had the whole compound to themself. It'd been six minutes.

Then some action: a familiar whirring sound from the next room over. Was that… yes, Thief's drone. So I finally knew which shell I was up against, at least, but now the problem was they could easily discover me with the drone and have plenty of time to react. This would invalidate the last six minutes of my life, and I couldn't have it. So I ducked into the little bathroom, tucked my 3D model into the corner as closely as Bungie would allow, and said an atheist's prayer: oh crap oh crap oh god oh crap.

I got lucky: the Thief wasn't thorough in their recon and flew past my hidey hole without checking their corners.

It was at this point I realized that the ending of this face off would determine my mood for the next 12 hours, and that freaked me out for its own reasons. Extraction shooters, especially when played solo, are like mainlining the "choke or clutch" rushes I get from 1v1 Rainbow Six Siege scenarios, but like 18 times per night.

When all ends well, I get a memory to replay on repeat in my brain for a week, feeling good about myself and the game I've devoted entire days, sometimes weeks, of my life to. But the inherent stakes of extraction shooters also apply a constant pressure to not lose or else, a familiar dread that drove me to swearing off ranked modes in shooters for good and gravitate toward chiller, often older multiplayer shooters in recent years (like Halo or Battlefield 6).

It's a tension that I've always had with Hunt: Showdown too, but Marathon's emphasis on "loadout value" affixes an exact number to failure. So that's why I tend to use free loadouts: It's more fun to enter a match with a clean slate (the best I can do is win) than a backpack full of expectations (the best I can do is not lose).

Anyways, all that emotional mumbo jumbo would have to be processed later. Seven minutes had passed, and with that drone flying out of earshot, my opening finally arrived. I bashed in the vent grate, Adam Jensen-ed into the adjacent room, and found the lone Thief perched on a countertop in their makeshift fortress. The window shutters were closed and exits trapped with claymores—an almost perfect setup for safely looting the rest of the compound via drone while their body relaxes. It's too bad they forgot about the vent.

As I blasted them out of their drone view and into DBNO, they attempted to lead me toward a claymore that was already gone—presumably a last-ditch effort to deny me their goods. Maybe a glint of hope persisted for them as two UESC bots rushed into the room, but I blasted them too. Seven minutes and 38 seconds later, the war was over.

The haul was arguably not worth the time and mental strain—a nice green backpack, shield, healing items, and two blue valuables that cashed out for a few thousand credits—but I'll take the win.

As they held G to give up, a rush of relief washed over me, but also something else. It was a little embarrassing how much I cared about winning this fight, and I couldn't help but empathize with the Thief. They didn't really misplay the situation or make a grievous error: they just walked at a normal pace, looted stuff, and even covered their back when deciding to drone. I just happened to spawn closer to South Relay and hear them first. Extraction shooters are kinda bullshit like that.

Arc Raiders used to be a much faster game during development—quite literally, as Embark reduced the speed of everything by roughly 60% after it shifted the game towards a PvPvE extraction shooter. It's something you can see pretty clearly in the game's original reveal trailer, where players were leaping around every which way and running at the speed of light, with Dancing on My Own blaring in the background. It's a vibe, for sure, but far from what Arc Raiders is today.

In fact, halfway through the trailer is a shot of a robotic character flying through the air screaming. I'd completely forgotten this scene until we spoke to Embark production director Caio Braga in an interview following his GDC talk, where he confirmed that it was Arc Raiders' old launch pads in action all those years ago.

"We had jump pads for a long time, and when we were running faster than Usain Bolt and using jump pads, the game turned more whimsical." It's very much the tone we see in the original trailer that's so alien to what we have in our hands now that you could convince me that it was a different game altogether. Well, that's technically true.

"It was one of the things we removed [in the extraction shooter pivot] for two reasons," Bragga said, going on to explain that they wanted players to be more tactical, and that it didn't fit with the new, more grounded tone for the world: "Before, it was much more heroic, and it fit much better."

Naturally, you might be wondering how the Snap Hook fits into this, since this tool lets you zip around and pull off all kinds of wacky stunts—including riding Arcs. It sounds like it would have been a relic from this older version of the game, but "the Snap Hook has been in the game since the beginning."

The difference between it and the jump pads is that the Snap Hook "managed to pivot well" into the slower, methodical gameplay Embark was aiming for after settling on a more immersive extraction shooter.

Braga explains that it used to be more or less unrestricted, and you could fly around "like Spider-Man". In its current form, outside of physics-defying tech players have figured out, the Snap Hook is just intended to reach high ledges faster. Honestly, I can't even begin to imagine what kind of broken movement tech players would have uncovered with the old version of this tool. But alas, it seems like we'll never know.

Embark has not shied away from discussing its original plans for Arc Raiders, which were drastically different from what ultimately emerged. It was supposed to be a more PvE-focused game before it became the extraction shooter hit it is today.

In a GDC talk, Arc Raiders production director Caio Braga went into more detail about the direction—more accurately, directions—the team explored early on. Braga explained that when he joined the team in 2020, no one could give him a clear idea of what the game actually was.

"You'd ask someone who would say it was a battle royale versus Arc, or it's a co-op Shadow of the Colossus game, or it's a hero looter shooter…our Arc developers thought the game was a co-op Souls game." For Braga, he saw it as a boss fight race with obstacles.

Because of Embark's structure and philosophy during development, the team was very autonomous: "Everyone in the team could do what they believed the game was". Of course, with so many different ideas about what Arc Raiders was, the project was pulled in many different directions at the same time. It sounds like the proverbial 'too many cooks in the kitchen'.

Braga recalled playtests where they'd try out a feature, only to have the next test undermine it. The weapons team would make weapons that could melt Arc, and the team behind the machines' intricate AI would up the Arc: The Arc became harder, and the weapons less impactful.

At another point during development there was basically no UI, which developers thought would help ramp up the immersion, but then the UX team felt there wasn't enough information for the players, so it went in the opposite direction and overshot with XP, enemy names, and damage numbers.

"We were doing this on a daily basis," Braga explains. "Every play test would be playing one of those five or six different games", or spins on the core loop of spawning in, running to the boss, and killing it before the other players.

This eventually led to two major pivots. The first, known as Hail Mary, was to have a much stricter vision and actually settle on a direction. While internal testing pointed towards the game being fun, external playtesting told a different story. It wasn't consistently fun.

This is what Embark calls the reset. Reflecting on it, Braga noted that "a lot of games would have been cancelled at this point," after spending three years and a lot of money on it. But with a strong foundation, like enemy AI, sound effects, and maps, the team "needed a bigger change."

"We stopped forcing the game [or games] we wanted, and we looked at the game we had." This led them to an extraction shooter, capitalising on Embark's established experience with PvP with The Finals, and many developers' past at EA's DICE.

Shrinking the 120-person team down to just 25 (it later grew again), production became much more focused as they built upon what they called the four pillars: high stakes, choice and agency, fidelity and depth, and accessibility. Those principles are very much apparent in Arc Raiders as we know it today, offering a high-stakes extraction shooter but with a much lower barrier to entry. It's casual without lacking depth. Hell, you can even roleplay and make friends with other players if you'd like to.

As much as I'd love to see how a PvE boss-rush mode would actually play out today, Embark was right to pivot towards an extraction shooter. It's the first of its kind to really break into the mainstream in many ways, and I don't think it would have seen that same success as a F2P raid race.

The extraction shooter is still figuring itself out. That's a funny thing to say about a videogame genre that's been around for like a decade (Escape From Tarkov's first alpha goes back to 2016), but it's true. For a long time, there were pretty much two examples of extraction games charting their own path: Escape From Tarkov with its milsim realism and grind-friendly progression, and Hunt: Showdown with its narrow focus on intense PvP and temporary perks.

Then Arc Raiders changed the conversation. It showed us that extraction shooters are not just a potent format for PvP, but also thrilling venues for cooperation, roleplay, and survival horror fantasy. It demonstrated that these games need not be taken so seriously.

I think that's why I didn't see Marathon coming. Bungie's extraction shooter is also charting its own path, but unlike Arc Raiders, Marathon is seeking a middle ground between two extremes: It has Tarkov's factions, its progression, and those butterflies-in-your-stomach moments as you're limping toward extract with 20k in your backpack.

But Marathon also has Hunt: Showdown's emphasis on intense and frequent PvP, which is kind of amazing, because I've always maintained that it's Hunt's lack of backpacks and checklists that makes it so fun. I usually hate these games' overeliance on the "thrill" of dragging boxes from one menu to another, but honestly, Marathon has its hooks in me deep.

Calculated cuts

Why does it work? I think it comes down to a few design choices that I originally thought were terrible ideas: Marathon has no safe pockets, it has short round timers, and it restricts players to just one quest at a time.

Having come off 60 hours of Arc Raiders, it all sounded backwards. Do they not know that safe pockets are crucial for making hard losses less punishing? Have they never experienced the euphoria of ticking off three quests in a single run? Is 25 minutes long enough to get anything done? Is Bungie failing to read the room here?

Not at all, it turns out. These cuts aren't random, but calculated: Bungie is stingy with quests and time and loot because it doesn't want Marathon to become primarily a checklist. The factions and the quests are all just table setting, and we're not here to eat the plates. Bungie, which has made a few quality multiplayer shooters in its time, wants the very best part of this FPS to be front-and-center: The PvP is the reason to be here, so go out and find it.

That's the realization that made all of Marathon's pieces fall into place for me. Whereas a round of Tarkov or Arc Raiders can sometimes feel more like a grocery trip than a proper adventure—not to throw shade at that, I like grocery shopping too—Marathon forces me to pick one or two things to care about. I have my one contract, which is usually as simple as hacking a datapad in Overflow or something, and I maybe have a few earmarked materials to look out for.

All the while, my head is on a swivel waiting for some real action to break out. This is where I find it interesting to compare how Hunt: Showdown and Marathon use its different rules to engineer confrontations with other squads.

Clash royale

Hunt matches revolve around bounty boss targets that all players are racing to find. As squads dig up clues and converge on the same one or two boss locations in the first 10 to 15 minutes, showdowns become inevitable. The first squad there has to make the choice to pick a fight with the boss and risk alerting nearby players, or lie in wait for an ambush. It's a clean and quietly brilliant format, but it wouldn't gel with a "backpack game" like Marathon.

Bungie wants the loot lust and the constant action, so instead of forcing players to converge in the same places, it simply made maps with fewer overall places. Both games have similar max playercounts—Hunt is always 12 and Marathon between 12 and 16. Hunt divides those players between 10 major compounds while Marathon maps like Perimeter and Dire Marsh have more like five or six.

The result is that, despite everyone entering a Marathon run with different goals, squads clash as a matter of course: In 45 hours of playtime so far, I've had maybe four matches with no PvP at all. It also helps that Bungie's compounds are these large, incredible multi-level facilities that you can easily spend 10 minutes picking apart.

So now I see the vision. Because most contracts can be completed in just a few minutes, Marathon matches have this bouncy quality where a three-person squad hits up a handful of compounds so everyone can check off their task—and share in the XP—while having a very good chance of scrapping with other teams along the way. You can have a complete Marathon experience in like 15 minutes and then matchmake into another one in seconds. It's pretty slick!

It's funny how these divisive design choices end up explaining each other: Match times are only 25 minutes because maps aren't that big. Maps aren't big to ensure PvP is frequent. Contracts are limited to reinforce PvP and encourage teamplay.

Gear fear

And as for safe pockets, I'm surprised how little I've thought about them. I think it's because Marathon doesn't really need backpacks with insurance policies when its base format already caters to successful extractions.

When I consider that exfil points are never more than a two- or three-minute run away, or how several more can spawn throughout the match, how generous team revives are, or how I only have to hold on to my gear for like 20 minutes maximum to take it home, a safe pocket would deflate tension I'm glad to keep.

Much like both Hunt and Arc Raiders, Marathon bypasses gear fear with generous free loadouts. You usually won't go "zero to hero" with a single Punch pistol and a wimpy white shield, but you'll leave better than you came in.

There is wiggle room to all of this, of course. Solo play is a different beast entirely. Matches are a little emptier when I only have the one contract to hit, which is why I've mostly used solo mode and Rook runs to focus on salvage. And when revives are off the table, it does feel a little cruel to lose everything. Bungie warns that solo play is supposed to be harder than squads, but it also says changes are on the table if the community feels strongly.

But overall, I'm just surprised how well it comes together. Marathon is methodical, yet explosive. It's a backpack game where teamfights are constant. It's the only game I've played that balances the motivations of an extraction shooter this well, and that's largely thanks to the ways it cuts against the grain.

After a less-than-ideal early reception last year, Bungie made the call to indefinitely delay Marathon while it returned to the drawing board somewhat. Now, it's officially back on the menu, and the Marathon launch time is drawing near.

But release is far from the end of Bungie's plans for Marathon, as it unveiled Season 1: Death is the First Step and gave us a look at what's to come later on in the roadmap. Controversially, it's also locked in mandatory server wipes roughly every three months, so don't get too precious about any loot you find at launch.

Below, I'll go over the Marathon launch times in major regions, whether you can preload the game to start looting Tau Ceti from the moment the lights turn green, and the system requirements.

When is the Marathon unlock time?

Marathon releases on Thursday, March 5, at 6 pm UTC, on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. This works out as the following times in each region:

• US Pacific: 10 am PST, March 5
• US Eastern: 1 pm EST, March 5
• UK: 6 pm GMT, March 5
• Central Europe: 7 pm CET, March 5
• Australia: 5 am AEDT, March 6
• New Zealand: 7 am NZDT, March 6

This comes just over three days after the end of the Server Slam, where we all had the opportunity to give Bungie's extraction shooter a test run. Bungie has taken a lot of the feedback on board and has even given us some interesting player stats, like how we extracted 145,822 cases of Premium Tick Milk and a whopping 384,866 Drinkable Cheeseburgers, for some reason.

It's also worth pointing out that the third map, Outpost, which was absent from the Server Slam, launches a day after the game on March 6. You'll have to be Runner level 12, giving you some time to level up and prepare.

Meanwhile, Ranked mode and the Cryo Archive map go live in the second half of March, with the latter requiring players to complete an unlock event. Check out the Marathon roadmap to see what else is in store.

Is there preloading for Marathon?

Yes, you can currently preload Marathon on all platforms if you've pre-ordered the game. Note that on PC, you'll need roughly double the game's overall size to be able to preload and decrypt the files on launch day—if you don't have space, just download it at launch. Marathon's only around 25 GB across all platforms, so it shouldn't take too long to download anyhow.

Marathon system requirements

Here are the minimum and recommended system requirements for Marathon on PC:

Last week, Tim Clark, PC Gamer's resident Arc Raiders die-hard (seriously, he has 530 hours in-game), sat down and spoke with Embark Studios' Virgil Watkins, design director, and Bence Pajor, audio director, ahead of the launch of its next major update, Shrouded Sky.

In the 40 minutes we had, we asked the team all about the so-called 'aggression-based matchmaking' (ABMM) that's quickly become a boogeyman in the community, the seemingly impossible balancing act between PvE and PvP, Expeditions, and much more.

You can find the full conversation below, largely with Watkins, though Pajor speaks on audio design at the end. I recommend using the navigation bar (left on desktop, up on mobile) to cruise around to specific topics that interest you, since, as you can imagine, they had a lot to say about the current shape of their breakout extraction shooter.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

Matchmaking and PvE vs PvP balance

PC Gamer: In hindsight, do you regret talking publicly about ABMM? If feels like PvE-focused players now feel betrayed if they get attacked in their lobbies at all, whilst PvP players resent not being able to dine out on easy kills. How do you view the discourse, and how do you see the balance being struck going forward?

Virgil Watkins, design director: It's been interesting because, I think in the way that came up, it was never even intended to be discussed in that manner, because that isn't even correct as to how it works. Like, we didn't coin the term aggression-based matchmaking.

It's not nearly as binary as people think. There's no such thing as a friendly lobby or an aggressive lobby; the system is still mixing everybody, and everything's down to human motivation. Just because you're tending toward the more peaceful end doesn't remove the autonomy from other people making a choice about wanting your stuff.

So I think people do feel as though it's incredibly binary, and even shooting one raider, one time, just automatically puts you into an aggressive lobby. But that's not at all how it works. It's far more nuanced than that. Your engagement with PvP is part of the situation, and it's not as though one action does it. It's a series of rounds together and things like that.

I've seen people saying, well, if you're shot at, you should never even shoot back if you want to get into the safer end of the spectrum. But I feel like that's not the case.

Yeah, it's not. It's not nearly that cut [and dry]. It's something we're continuing to tune but we never really wanted to apply this mentality of it being a hard split of you either play this way or you do not play this way. The game needs that element of tension and risk from other players to be good. And of course, we acknowledge that people are having a lot of fun with these safer lobbies, but it's not prescriptive. We're never going to say, 'oh, because you play this way, you're only going to experience these types of people.'

My assumption, as someone who's covered games for a long time, is that you would want to keep the biggest cohort of players as happy as you possibly can. That includes both ends of the spectrum. So do you see this as something you're going to continue tweaking and tuning, but you broadly think that it's been a success?

That's sort of what we've been asking ourselves. Because obviously, the game mode of extraction carries a lot of inherent elements and expectations with it, and even as we've seen it in live, it is not at all how it was working in our tests—either for ourselves or the previous [public] test. It was hyper, hyper aggressive in those tests; people never worked together. I think it kind of surprised us in exactly how many people [did] latch on to and are having fun with these elements of the game. So it certainly encourages us to lean more forward into giving opportunities to have friendly and fun interactions.

During the Shared Watch event, I've been chilling in Blue Gate on the top of buildings with six other players shooting Arcs, and we're swapping blueprints, and people are playing music. It's not what I expected from the game. I think a lot of people really like it. But how do you keep that very vocal PvP audience who just want to get in there, and they get their kicks from taking your stuff?

Well, I think we just have to primarily make sure that the PvP side of the game is as fair as we can make it and, obviously, there's still things we need to work out with balance on some factors and giving them tools that are, of course, meant for player versus player combat.

We still have the mantra—and this is even regardless of the formation of this PvE-heavy audience—that the game never asks you to fight other players. That's entirely your own decision. So you're always going to have people who have the motivation to fight, because there are people who just like PvP. I think we need to keep making sure we're providing them with the tools and means to do that in an engaging way. But you're absolutely correct, we have this cohort of players who want to play more peacefully—or role play, even—and ensure that we don't harm their experience either. So it is a precarious position.

This is a real example from a Stella Montis night raid: We're all just running around chatting, and one guy did a heel turn and killed someone, and within seconds the whole lobby had descended on him and dispensed street justice. They call them the sheriffs of Stella Montis. But these guys don't always get it right either. Sometimes they'll just kill the wrong guy! How do you feel about that kind of emergent gameplay?

Well, I mean, for me, that's actually kind of the hope with all of it: letting players lead with their own motivations and create all those stories for each other. And that's not something we can ever author or force to happen, and I'm glad that we don't try. I far prefer that we give players the means and the context and the opportunity to do these things, and then they do what they want to do.

I've even seen videos where people cause that kind of chaos on purpose, like they'll have a silenced weapon and watch two people being friendly, and they'll shoot at just the right moment. The guy turns like, 'Why'd you do that?' And they get in a fight, and then a third guy shows up, and punishes the first guy, and then no one knows what's going on anymore. And yeah, I think those are some of the better moments you can hope to see.

How much weight do the end-of-game surveys have in the matchmaking?

Zero factor. Those are just to help us gauge how players felt about the round. They have no mechanical change on what happens to you. It is solely based on your actions in the round. Those just go to our data team and help us pair up like things that occurred in the server.

So that—and I understand why this sort of myth emerged—really messed with a lot of our PvP sentiment metrics, because it was meant to gauge "of the PvP that occurred to you. Was it good?" Not, "do you even like PvP or not?" So then we get really weird graphs that don't match up with what we're seeing.

Expeditions and blueprints

We're midway through the second Expedition. How long do you see the loop of doing the Expedition and then re-earning blueprints remaining interesting?

I think I said this even early on when we did the initial blog post about the system; it is a bit of an experiment. Because we didn't want to force resets on everyone, then now we're on this road of 'how do we make it interesting enough for the largest amount of people to participate in this?'

There are issues with the thing itself. The currency system we have today was just what we had time to develop. And we reduced it, of course, for Expedition two, just because, even though at the time we calibrated the 5 million [coins] around what the average player's economy looked like, it still overshot in [terms of] how much people felt like they had to engage with it, or how much they felt compelled to chase that.

But because of other things that were actively in development, we didn't have time to shift the system to what we intend to do next, and we want to tie more game loops into it, and not just make it about currency value. So, ideally, we'll be able to talk about that fairly soon.

Do you think it's something that's likely to see major changes?

I mean, I wouldn't say there's going to be major changes in one giant drop, but definitely we're going to try to adjust and shave off pain points, and make sure that the incentives we are providing are catching what people find compelling. So, like, skill points probably won't hold forever. Of course, we don't want people to be able to max out the entire skill tree. That's not the way it's designed. And then, of course, at some point, we're very likely going to revamp parts of the skill tree. So then what other elements do we make part of the Expedition system to keep it enticing?

But by and large, it is there as an optional reset mechanic, so players who do want to go through the loop again have a means to do so, while still allowing players who want to just keep playing on their current character to do that.

Have you considered allowing players to bring a couple of their favourite blueprints across, almost like the safe pocket system, in order to prevent people from getting stuck trying to find one in particular?

That was an idea we even had before launch. It's a tricky situation because the blueprints in particular are such a power elevation; now you have the autonomy to craft this thing very deliberately, and does that fit in? And then as well, if we ever make—and we have made—adjustments to the blueprint drop rates and things like that.

But I certainly don't think it's off the table. Of course, it's a very rational thing for players to want to do, like, 'I work really hard for these and please let me have a few of them.' So yeah, I wouldn't say no to any idea along those lines. It's mostly about how you balance what is kind of part of the core run-up through progression, and blueprints are a significant part of that, of actually getting them.

I wonder if we can address that particular pain point by additional changes or systemic changes to how blueprints are found, acquired, or learned, rather than needing to feel like they have to come along with the Expedition system. So you know, giving you better or more autonomy over how you acquire blueprints, for example, might alleviate some of that concern on that side of things. So I don't want to overburden the Expedition system with things that we might not want to do.

Running a live service

Embark mentioned in a previous blog post that, having spent years developing Arc Raiders, the studio is now having to build up the muscle of running this sort of a live service game. What have been the biggest lessons learned so far, and other than patch notes, where do you think you still need to improve?

I think one thing is the amount of times you have to drop what you're doing and respond to an active issue—a really crazy bug is found, or you get a sudden massive DDoS attack for eight hours straight. I think a lot of our team wasn't ready to drop what they were doing and respond to that. I'm working on this new feature and working on this thing, and now I have to respond to this, and that takes up, like, two days of my time to deal with that.

So I think that's been a bit of the growing pains, especially at the scale we have now. Like, nobody whatsoever thought we'd have this many players. It's a little, even for me, like deer in headlights. 'Oh, wow. All right, let's go.'

So that's definitely the biggest one—just responding to the things that come out of live, whereas in dev we're working at our own pace, essentially, and are just reacting to ourselves, not what the wider public is doing. And we could have tested the game for like three years straight and never even touched the amount of playtime we see in three days. So, yeah, [players are] finding wild things that we would have never even stumbled across, so that's always been fun to see.

You've very rapidly built up this community of content creators, and there's been quite a bit of discussion about how Embark should act when a prominent streamer, such as Burnt Peanut, showcases a glitch (ostensibly as a way of bringing it to your attention). We saw this with the recent duplication glitch. How do you avoid it seeming like those people are getting preferential treatment?

All I can say with this issue in particular is that it was more of a coincidence. We already had a fix ready to go for it when it kind of exploded. But of course, you'll have things come to your attention in a very loud way through some channels, and then it becomes hard to gauge the level at which it's being used. So I don't feel as though there's a two-lane thing. We respond to stuff the moment we know about it; it just takes time to patch certain issues compared to others.

With something like this, where we can see very clear steps involved, it makes it very easy for us to chase, versus stuff that's far deeper into the engine. That's why we have had such a long time dealing with the various wall glitching issues, because that is a super complicated thing. And I know everyone out there thinks like, "oh, just put volumes, or whatever", but it's like inherent, physics-level stuff and networking stuff, and it's intrinsic to the way the game is built. And those things are very risky to patch rapidly. We have to test them very thoroughly. It just depends on what we can do and when we can do it. It's not about who's the loudest about doing whatever the exploit is.

Do you think Arc Raiders being a paid game actually did it a service because players had to commit to it, right? It wasn't like they just played two rounds and went, "No, it's not for me", and kind of dipped out.

Yeah I have to imagine so. I mean, just using my own gamer brain, that's how I tend to feel about stuff. You know, I do a bit more research into it. I'll watch content creators or reviews that I feel like I align with and then, when I make the purchase, I feel like I'm generally more informed than, as opposed to, free to play games that I'll just give a go because they're kind of interesting. You lack that sort of personal investment. So I think that definitely did us some favours, and it's part of the reason why we changed back then, from free to play to paid, because then we felt like we could build a product that was more appropriate for that.

PvE encounters and events

The Matriarch and Queen boss fights, at least in PvE-friendly lobbies, essentially seem like solved problems, in that they're often over in just five minutes. I've also noticed players expressing frustration that they put a lot of effort and expense into killing the boss, but when the fight ends, the loot is gone in seconds. What changes to these encounters do you have in mind?

I mean, yeah, we keep evaluating how it's going. But this is where that whole 'who do we cater for', or make happy or not happy thing comes in, because those enemies, even though they're huge and deadly, they're not intended for the full server to go up against and get equally rewarded. It is meant to be a couple of dedicated squads, maybe, working together while also dealing with other players.

It is pretty mixed. You get the players who do end up in the slightly friendlier lobbies, where you do see everybody working together, and then there's that moment, like, 'Ok, does everyone just fight it out now, over what loot there is?' Or is the whole thing a PvP bloodbath the whole time? So it's pretty spread for how people are actually engaging with it.

In my experience, that's not how they're being played, though. The lobbies I'm in, I'd say, there's consistently a large group of kitted-out people these days, and the bosses are dead five minutes into the map.

And that's definitely on us to an extent. I think we gave players too effective abilities to take down these things too early, perhaps. So they were tuned more for what I would call mid-game gear. And then we've looked at whether to tune the bosses up. We don't even call them bosses internally. They're more like encounters. They're just large. Because I think 'boss' sets some expectations that they're not even necessarily intended to live up to.

It's tricky, right? Do we reward the people who are like you, who might pick their moment well, and go get some scraps from part of the fight and then sneak away? We try to look at it through the lens of, like, 'what kind of raider is this person trying to be?' And are you just clever because you can snag something and scoot off? Are you going to be the guy who capitalises at the end of the fight because everyone's worn down and out of ammo? Or are you the one who's trying to pull everyone together and have the fight on even terms?

I think it's important that we try to make sure that those things are viable for players. But I completely acknowledge the frustration of trying to play the encounter what you feel is the right way, and not getting a reward out of that.

Likewise, events like Locked Gate and Hidden Bunker seem to heavily incentivise people to camp the entrances rather than actually complete tasks. I'm not doing the mechanical part of the event—collecting the keys or doing the antennae—because if I do that, I'm running all around the map, but then there's a single point where I need to be once that's done. Are there any plans to tweak how those work?

So that one's a good use case for where revisions are probably required, right? Of course, when we built that, we had an idealised way of how we hoped people would engage with it. And then, you know, as players always do, they find this sort of meta throughline. A lot of the stuff that we launched with was very much a consequence of the capacity and time we had up to that point.

Now that we have tons of live data, we can go look at those existing map conditions, because there's a few others that have similar issues. Like Locked Gate is another one that has kind of a similar problem. So it's about us trying to keep the spirit of those, but adjust the mechanics so you're not getting quite those moments.

What we thought at the time would be an ok mitigation factor for Hidden Bunker is that we tried to stack pretty deadly enemies near the entrance. But players, especially higher-end players or more engaged players, are so effective now at taking out the Arc that it didn't become the mitigating factor that we initially intended.

We've seen those enormous Arcs plodding along the horizon for months now. My prediction is that when they actually arrive, we'll get a map that actually is one of those, and we're fighting inside and on top of it. On a scale of 1-10, how close am I to the truth?

I think it's an easy idea to reach for. I can put it that way.

Damn. I thought I was a genius, but you're saying I'm not?

I mean, the execution, it's a lot of fun, but I think it's a natural want to see those giant ones on the horizon and wonder what does the inside of that look like.

New weapons

You've mentioned new Arc appearing in the roadmap, but what about new weapons and items? What kind of cadence can we expect for new guns over the year, and what do you consider the biggest gaps in the current arsenal in terms of archetypes?

I don't know if we have a set cadence. I think we're striving to always try to have a little bit of something with each drop. And what we're doing right now is trying to make it as cohesive as possible with whatever that drop is. So there's some interrelation between the other things coming in those updates, and whether that's how you obtain the item or what items are useful in that situation. So that would be the intent, I suppose, with how we drop those things.

Machine learning

Back in 2021, Tom Solberg from Embark published an explanation of how you guys were using machine learning to teach the Arc how to move and animate. Since the game came out, people—and I'm sure it's their imaginations—have been attributing the idea that some of the Arc are learning, like the leapers are finding their way into tighter spaces, or the ticks are banding together. Not wanting to attribute intelligence when it isn't there, but is this the system that's creating those situations? Are the Arc genuinely learning new techniques? Are you using any kind of AI-related tech?

None whatsoever. That's just our AI designers and our AI engineers. To be specific, I mean AI in the game sense. It's the ones who author our enemies, that's their work. The machine learning is literally only for teaching them to walk and navigate the environment. It doesn't do any of their behaviours or their attacks or anything like that. That's just us in the way we author them.

Terminators and humanoid robots

None of the existing Arc are humanoid—they all either resemble drones or take inspiration from animals. Is that an internal design rule: no Terminators?

Yeah, at present, because I really think the distinction between that silhouette being a player is pretty important. And as well, once you have something that's humanoid in shape, you start being way more critical of how it moves and behaves and acts near you. And then you run into situations where, like, it just kind of falls apart aesthetically or in behaviour once it's a humanoid. And also, it's kind of been done to death. So I don't know what our ambition is there, but we get a lot more interesting gameplay and freedom with making a platform that's purpose-built.

Audio design

PC Gamer: So the guns in Arc Raiders are essentially repurposed junk. It's barrels made from pipes, improvised stocks and handmade bullets. How did those qualities translate to what you want to do with those weapons? Is it strange for you to kind of have to make the audio for a gun that's supposed to be made of crap?

Bence Pajor, audio director: It's quite inspiring, I think. We discuss this with the people designing them, and when we figure out the visual design, we talk about how it's made, what the inner parts could be, and then I try to just make something out of that and add noises that could be appropriate to how it looks.

How has the process for capturing gun sounds changed over time? I remember, back in my early days of the industry, we would always be told the audio team were going out to gun ranges and shooting a bazillion guns. Do you still do that? Or is it more about using tools and creating sounds from scratch?

No, we record them. That's the best way of getting something that sounds believable. We still do the massive gun records. Well, they don't have to be massive, but once you go out, you want to record as much as possible. You want different calibres, different barrel lengths, different ammo, different everything, and then collect all that and break it down into parts. Then we tend to reassemble that in the engine to fit whatever kind of weapon it is [we're making].

A lot of the Arcs seem to include animal sounds in their audio cues. It reminds me a bit of when people are creating the audio for monsters in horror movies, where they'll take a lot of real-world animals and mash them all together in the mix. What has been the goal there?

It's kind of the same thing. We look at the shape of the thing and try to figure out, 'if this were to communicate, how would it sound?' And especially for the larger ones, they are a little bit more animal-like; the flying drones are less so. But the really big ones, yeah, with all the legs and everything, they tend to look a little bit more animal-like, but we've tried to stay away from them being too much like animals, because they're not, they're giant robots. So we try to keep it very mechanical.

But at the same time you want some expression to it. You want it to express something. So it's easy to go down the biological route, because that has a lot of expression, but we try to combine that with a lot of mechanical noises. So we do weird recordings for that as well. And then in some cases, we've mixed that with the heavily processed animal noises as well.

What kind of tricks do you use to create tension in the soundscape, where there's not necessarily a player or a robot, but you're trying to ratchet up that feeling of something going on around you?

I have an idea that if you try to capture ordinary things, like mundane, daily sounds that you hear every day when you move about, and try to get them in to create some kind of familiarity to what you hear, it's easier to understand what's going on around you. And then, hearing the slightly more concerning sounds, the contrast there creates quite a lot of tension as well.

And just as the game plays, there is a lot of downtime that creates pauses in the excitement. And I think those are super important for the tension, because you sort of know that there can be a very dangerous situation at any moment but you're not hearing it yet. So it kind of raises the tension. And you keep listening for dangers and trying to understand, like, is there danger somewhere? And I think the contrast between boring, ordinary, mundane sounds and then you're listening for the dangerous ones, creates a lot of tension.

It's not doing my cortisol level any good. I'm stressed the whole time.

Yeah, me too. Actually.

Arc Raiders has, by all accounts, done rather quite well for itself. Shooting past 12 million players worldwide back in January, a recent investor presentation reveals that 2026 got off to a bang for the hottest extraction shooter on the block (thanks, Eurogamer).

A slide relating to the game itself claims the following—firstly, that Arc Raiders hit a concurrent player peak of 960,000 players in January, and "approximately six million

weekly active users sustained to date". The exact minutiae of what "sustained" means isn't clear, but that nigh-on 1 million isn't too far from reality.

On Steam alone, Arc Raiders hit an all-time peak of 481,966 players. Factor in consoles and other digital platforms, and you could certainly hit 1 million concurrents across the board.

Data from Newzoo also looks to more-or-less verify the count, claiming January peaks of daily active users of around 1.6 million on Steam, 1.5 million on PlayStation, and just under 1 million on Xbox.

Which is a mighty number for an extraction shooter, competing with the highest playercounts of a completely different genre known for having long-time player counts in the millions: The MMORPG.

For reference, back in June last year, it was estimated that Final Fantasy 14 had around 950,000 active subscribers by a (long-running, but fan-made) player census. And that 6 million "weekly active users" number puts it on par with World of Warcraft's highest subscriber peaks, like the 5.5 million reported subs it boasted during Legion back in 2015.

Granted, these are subscription MMOs, and Arc Raiders is a buy-oncer with some microtransactions stuffed in it, but that's still impressive for an extraction shooter. Well, kinda. Live service games, be they extraction shooters or some other brand of co-op, seem to have slotted comfortably into the same position that MMORPGs occupied back in the genre's heyday.

Per the report itself, Arc Raiders is most popular in North America and Europe, partially responsible for a stonking 364% revenue increase year-on-year in those regions alongside Maplestory and The First Descendant. Not too shabby, especially for a game that's committed the cardinal sin of imperfect road signage.

After a mixed reception to Marathon's first public playtest last year (not helped by the whiplash of Arc Raiders' remarkably positive playtest), Bungie returned to the drawing board to overhaul some of the extraction shooter's features. Now it's back on the menu and almost time for round two, as a second public playtest will happen before the March 5 release date.

Bungie had already teased that we'd have one more test drive, and it just reiterated that promise, explaining, "We'll have an open preview weekend before launch, and everyone will be able to try Marathon out". No date has been revealed yet, however.

The big public closed alpha last year ran for a very generous week and a half, from April 23 until May 4, and other closed tests later in the year lasted a similar length. This time around though, it seems we'll only have the weekend—if I had to guess, it's probably more like Friday to Monday, but still much more limited.

Additionally, Bungie is clear in noting that "everyone" will be able to try it out, suggesting that this upcoming test weekend will be completely open across all platforms, unlike the closed alpha and more recent playtests at the end of 2025 that required players sign up and be one of the lucky few to receive invites.

To give credit to the very early closed alpha playtest, there was already a fair amount of content to play around with, including multiple maps and Runners, quests, and factions. Almost all of these aspects have since been overhauled, along with the addition of brand-new features, so I'm hoping we'll get to see how these changes have impacted the experience in the upcoming test weekend.

As much as it's a test that will no doubt provide Bungie with invaluable last-minute data, it's also Marathon's second chance, and I don't think it can afford to make even a mediocre impression again. Arc Raiders' honeymoon phase may be over, but it's still the game to beat.

In the time since Marathon's controversial public alpha, Bungie returned to the drawing board to make major changes and even introduce new features like proximity chat, solos, and Rook, effectively a free loadout option. At this point, the changes seem to be having a positive effect on fans who were previously not too impressed with what Bungie was showing.

While it's much more subtle and nebulous than these changes, Bungie has also claimed it's "doubling down on the dark, gritty, and grounded sci-fi world" through an updated visual style, "deepened environmental storytelling", and the narrative-tracking Codex.

This focus on narrative and world in an extraction shooter is rather hard to understand without seeing it in action. Nevertheless, when Bungie announced the voice cast for Marathon, with the likes of Samantha Béart, Roger Clark, Darin De Paul, Jennifer English, Neil Newbon, and Ben Starr, I was very taken aback. It's stacked, especially for a game like this.

Marathon's creative director, Julia Nardin, explains that the team "wanted to push the boundaries of what an extraction shooter can do with its story", going on to say that "Tau Ceti might appear abandoned, but the world of Marathon is very much alive and populated by an incredible cast."

What this means exactly remains to be seen, but it certainly points in the right direction—a deeper world with more storytelling and worldbuilding than you'd expect from a multiplayer game, much less an extraction shooter. Don't expect a linear, traditional narrative, I'm sure, but more fleshed-out lore, factions, and ongoing developments on Tau Ceti sound realistic.

Of course, it's hard to ignore the elephant in the room, Arc Raiders, which has also pushed for more of a narrative approach, with an evolving world and threats. It's not long ago that we unlocked the Stella Montis map, an abandoned research lab in the mountains, through a community event.

I wouldn't be surprised if Bungie is attempting something similar, especially with the studio's history and the army of famous voices on the project.

I love the idea of building a huge mechanical mobile base and using it to stomp my way around a post-apocalyptic landscape on giant metal legs. Throw in a PvPvE system where I can battle other players' bases and raid ruined cities for resources, and set the whole thing in an "industrial alternate history of 1910" ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire... yeah, Sand: Raiders of Sophie is ticking a lot of boxes for me.

The open world FPS from Ukrainian developer Hologryph has been on my radar for a while (it was just called Sand until late last year), but I've stupidly managed to miss all of the playtests it's had during development. It won't be much longer until I finally do get to try it out, though: Sand: Raiders of Sophie is stampeding its way onto Steam for a release in March. There's a new trailer to gawp at, too.

I've never been much of an extraction shooter guy, but games like Tarkov and Arc Raiders don't have giant steampunk bases I can build and pilot, do they? In Sand they're called Tramplers, by the way, and they look and sound awesome.

"Tramplers, your most loyal companion, act as a mode of transport, a main base, primary storage, protection from the elements and most formidable weapon for its captain and their crew," say the devs. "You can build your trampler from the ground up, customizing the size, layout and placements of its engine, compartments, storage and mortal weapons."

According to Sand's official site, you can even fold up the legs of your Trampler, turning it into a metal ship that can cross the water, though I don't see evidence of that in the trailer above. Sophie mostly looks like a desert world.

As you stomp around you'll battle with other players, competing for resources in the wastelands of a fallen planet. "The cities left in ruin upon Sophie hold untold riches, but danger lurks around every corner. Sail the world, scour the abandoned streets, monuments and wrecks, recover valuable loot, weapons and resources and fight off rival pirates before extracting with your spoils."

I've heard enough and I'm ready to do a bit of trampling. You can find Sands: Raiders of Sophie on Steam.

I had my doubts when Sony said in November that Bungie's troubled extraction shooter Marathon would be out in March 2026 come hell or high water, but it seems determined to prove me wrong. In a big update released today, Bungie not only recommitted to the March '26 launch but also revealed details on pricing, 'Reward Passes,' and the many ways the game has changed since Arc Raiders came along and completely stole its thunder.

An exact date still hasn't been announced, but Marathon is "targeting" a price of $40/£40/€35, putting it in line with big-time online shooters Helldivers 2 and Arc Raiders. "Purchasing Marathon will give you full access to the game, including a roadmap of free gameplay updates as the year progresses," Bungie said. "This will include new maps, new Runner shells, events, and more, starting with the exploration of UESC Marathon's Cryo Archive in Season 1."

Also like Helldivers, Marathon's reward passes will not expire, and will remain available for purchase even after new passes come out—although to be fair, Helldivers lifted that idea from Halo Infinite.

Marathon's more overt lifts, though, come straight from Arc Raiders. After saying in April that Marathon would not have proximity chat because it'd be too toxic, Marathon will launch with proximity chat; plans to launch without a solo queue have also been jettisoned. Both changes felt pretty much inevitable, given how the hugely successful Arc Raiders has become a machine for both generating hilarious clips of karmic justice and as a fascinating social experiment into player interaction.

Bungie has also added a new Runner shell called Rook, a limited loadout option that enables solo players to drop into matches in progress and scavenge loot without risking anything they've previously earned—and if you think that sounds a lot like Arc's free loadouts, well, yes, that's pretty much exactly what it is, although Marathon had similar "sponsor kits" available in its previous alpha so this is presumably more of an adjustment than a straight lift from Arc.

For the record, I think these are all good ideas, but where Arc Raiders has really separated itself from Marathon is that the AI enemies are both extremely dangerous and worth looting. That wasn't the case last time we played Marathon, but the devs in the video do talk up how their bots are now much deadlier and therefore play a bigger part of the game. (At this point I'm not prepared to take Bungie's word on anything loot-related until the gear is in my stash.)

In the footage, the Marathon enemies are all a mix of bipedal armed robots and hovering scanner drones. Notably absent was anything like the larger arc enemies—leapers, bastions, queens etc.—which make for such entertaining firefights in Embark's game. I also couldn't spot anything that looked like a backpack 'safe pocket' during the few times Marathon's inventory menu was on screen. This feature, which is core to both Arc Raiders and Escape from Tarkov, enables players to protect one (or several) pieces of loot from being stolen on kill. It feels so core to the genre's vibes, that it'd be very odd to omit it, so I've asked Bungie for clarification.

It's not a sprint

What isn't in doubt is how much better Marathon now looks. Bungie's commitment to the stark visual style remains, with the studio saying it is "doubling down on the dark, gritty, and grounded sci-fi world." That covers a range of improvements from better environments and environmental storytelling to dead bodies that not only stick around but actually decay over time, which not only looks cool (I guess?) but also has a practical use.

"You come into a room and you see a bunch of carnage, but you see one body is still pristine, you know that their killer is probably close and you are not safe," art director Jasons Sussman explained. "If everybody is just messy goop, you're probably okay."

Today's video also showcases Marathon's four zones (ie maps), three on the surface—Perimeter, Dire Marsh, and Outpost—and Cryo Archive, an end-game challenge set aboard the Marathon ship. "You're going to run into basically every type of environmental threat you have faced before," production director Emanuel Rosu says in the video. "You're going to fight a who's who of the highest-tier UESC units, and the UESC are there in this presence you haven't seen before."

One of the biggest challenges facing Marathon is the widely held assumption that it's cooked right from the jump, a pre-conceived notion driven by the very visible rough ride Marathon has had so far. As PC Gamer's resident Destiny problem-haver Tim Clark wrote in his April take on the game, "I can't think of many games which have been freighted with more problems to solve: from a spooked Sony, to the inherently hostile nature of the genre, and Bungie's own chequered history with Destiny's live service model, monetisation, and especially PvP balancing."

Coupled with the rise of a very direct competitor that seems to have got it all right (yes, Arc Raiders), Marathon doesn't seem likely to have an easy go of it. But the studio will surely be hoping that there is now a mainstream audience with an appetite for and understanding of the extraction shooter genre that didn't exist earlier this year.

Judging by the initial reaction to today's video on YouTube, though, Bungie does seem to have at least moved in the right direction. Very generally, there's a sense that today's reveal of the many changes made to the game is dramatically better than the original reveal, and that's led to a genuine sense of excitement in a lot of replies. The eagerness to grave dance on unpopular games remains a bad habit that's tough to overcome, and I do still feel like a March release might be rushing it in order to prevent the game from sliding into Sony's next fiscal year. But maybe the truth is simpler: Maybe Bungie really is ready to surprise us.

We've known for some time that Arc Raiders' "Cold Snap" winter event was on the horizon, but now exactly when it's happening. According to an Embark X post, the Cold Snap update arrives Tuesday, December 16.

According to Embark's official Arc Raiders roadmap, the Cold Snap update brings a new map condition called snowfall, the "Flickering Flames" event, a new raider deck (basically a battle pass), and new quests.

Players have speculated about what exactly the snowfall map condition will entail (is it just the same maps but with snow?), but a teaser image shared by Embark today of a collapsed raider in the snow suggests the extreme temperatures will carry consequences. It looks like players might have to limit their exposure to the elements to avoid freezing to death, or perhaps toss an incendiary grenade to warm up.

That's the most obvious way to make heat a factor of survival, but I wonder if Embark would go even further—what if wearing warmer clothes, like a fur jacket, increased your heat resistance? That'd instantly plunge Arc Raiders into the realm of pay-to-win cosmetics, so consider it unlikely, but it would be an interesting wrinkle.

This is probably the closest Arc Raiders will come to a "holiday" event—fitting for a grim post-apocalypse. It's also notable that Cold Snap marks the end of Arc Raiders' current roadmap. How the most exciting multiplayer shooter of the moment will evolve in 2026 is a mystery.

We learned in 2023 that PUBG was being fitted for an extraction shooter spinoff, referred to at the time as Project Black Budget. It was set to launch in the second half of 2024, but then 2024 came, Project Black Budget didn't, and frankly we forgot about the whole thing. I did, anyway.

Now, as the second half of 2025 withers away, it's back, officially known as PUBG: Black Budget and with a closed alpha test set to begin in December.

Developed by PUBG Studios, Black Budget is a PvPvE shooter set on a remote island that's trapped in a time loop and also being consumed by a supernatural phenomenon called—wait for it—the Anomaly. Okay, no points for originality there, but the game also promises "a focus on exploration and discovery rather than pure survival and combat," which I do find interesting. I've really been enjoying Arc Raiders lately, primarily because it's proven a far more cooperative experience than it appears at first blush, so an extraction shooter that leans into that side of the gameplay, as opposed to just shooting the hell out of everything, is one I want to know more about.

This test will be available exclusive on PC via Steam, and is open to players in North America, Europe, and Asia. Two sessions are planned, December 12-14 and December 19-21: To get in, head around to the Steam page, mash the "request access" button, and wait.

PUBG Studios didn't say how many testers it's looking for but given the early state of things, it's fair to assume that the number is limited and not all will get in. It also warned that, as an alpha test, this first go-around with Black Budget might not be the smoothest gaming experience ever.

Despite that potential for "various technical issues," there's no NDA on the test sessions, so those who do get in can "freely stream, capture, and share gameplay content throughout the testing period," and access keys will be given out via Twitch Drops while the test sessions are running.

"This open format is designed to encourage community feedback and engagement, helping PUBG Studios refine gameplay systems and performance ahead of future testing phases," PUBG Studios said. That's a sharp contrast to Bungie's approach to Marathon, which is having a playtest of its own in December that's restricted to North America and "strictly under an NDA," just a few months before it's set to go live.

Treyarch has taken some big swings with Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 this year, and while not all of them have landed (what the hell is that giant dude doing in the campaign?), one has done a better job than the rest: the extraction shooter-style Endgame mode.

After finishing the campaign, players get access to a new mode, Endgame, where they can complete objectives, gain experience and loot and then exfil at designated points. The addition of extraction to the usual COD multiplayer blueprint is certainly interesting, but the only problem was that unless you complete the campaign or have a friend who has, you couldn't check it out.

That was until Treyarch made the recent change of opening Endgame up to everyone, no matter if they'd finished the campaign or not. "We've seen an awesome response to Endgame from players who've already been dropping in, so we're making it available to everyone in Black Ops 7 starting Friday, November 21," Treyarch says in an official social media post.

Soon, everyone will be allowed into Avalon to earn "unique weapon camos, and take on new threats". You and your squad can fight in escalating zones of difficulty and then can exfil to maintain your combat rating and loot.

But what if you've already grinded the campaign and got into Endgame before this? Don't worry if you have, you'll be compensated. "If you've already completed the co-op campaign to unlock Endgame, we're sending additional rewards your way," the post says. These include the following:

• 3x 1-hour double level XP tokens
• 3x 1-hour double weapon XP tokens
• 3x 1-hour double battle pass XP tokens
• 3x Perkaholic Gobblegums

Meanwhile, those who dive straight into Endgame will also get a few co-op campaign unique rewards as well a global XP and a dedicated camo track:

• Irides One M15 MOD 0 Blueprint
• Phantom Shadow SK Blueprint
• Razorfire Vertex Ryden 45K Blueprint
• Grounded Mason Operator Skin
• 55,000 XP

While I can't say I've particularly enjoyed the campaign so far, I am happy to hear that Endgame will soon be unlocked for all. This mode is by far the most interesting part of Black Ops 7 and one that I've wanted to check out for some time now, so for better or worse, I'll be checking it out when tomorrow rolls around.

Escape From Tarkov is the rare PC game to strike it big without a presence on big digital storefronts like Steam, in part because it helped prove the extraction shooter had legs. Demand was still high to get the game on Valve's absurdly popular platform, though, and the day has finally come—though it was a bumpy ride getting to this point. In fact, it's still pretty bumpy: the launch is rife with problems.

The Steam debut, which coincides with Escape From Tarkov's 1.0 release, has helped the game rocket to the top of Downdetector, which is showing hundreds of reported connection issues per hour beginning this morning. The user reviews on Steam are bringing the game's score to a "Mixed" rating as players describe their issues logging in. As user Icedecknight put it in their review: "Negative review until I can actually play the game."

The official Tarkov account on X has acknowledged the launch woes, noting in a post that the team is "aware that due to high traffic, some players may experience problems connecting to servers and authorising in the game and launcher. Our technical team is actively working to stabilise the game servers and authorisation services."

Steam user Kev-O's review describes a seemingly common issue: "When I launched the game, a window popped up asking me to create an account, but when I went to their website to create an account, it was under maintenance. Haven't been able to play." While writing this article, I opened up the Escape From Tarkov website and was met with a 55 minute virtual queue to see the front page.

Other players are taking to social media, reporting error codes and bugs which prevent them from logging in. Error code 1000, error code 0, and error code 213, for instance, though that last one seems to be familiar to Tarkov players. As Reddit user ascend204 commented in a thread discussing login issues, "Welcome to Tarkov wipe day, expect the game to start working in a few hours. It's always a mess the first 2-3 hours." Still, others are reporting trouble updating the game, an inability to progress past the tutorial, and "20+ minute" loading screens.

In short, it's a bit of a mess, though nothing new for a popular live service game's hotly anticipated launch day. Tarkov is one of the biggest extraction shooters around, and many of the negative reviews are more concerned with the launch woes than the game itself. As a Steam review from YazlıkPlekumat says, it's the "best extraction shooter that you CAN'T play."

According to SteamDB, it's the second best-selling game on Steam right now, and though it's not rocking the charts at around 19,000 concurrent players while I write this, I have a feeling that number will go up as these issues are (hopefully) sorted out. Still, it may have an uphill battle catching up to fellow extraction shooter Arc Raiders on the platform, which is flying high after a ludicrously successful launch.

Bungie's next game, the troubled reboot of Marathon, is most easily described as an extraction shooter—currently the hottest genre on the planet due to the enormous success of Arc Raiders. But if one former Bungie developer had got his way, Marathon wouldn't be an extraction shooter. Not because he would have made the game differently, but because he hated the term so much, he wanted to change it.

Speaking on the Shooter Monthly podcast (via TheGamePost), Bungie's former director of product management Chris Sides said that he thought about collaborating with the studio's marketing team to come up with a different term for extraction shooters, one that presumably would have been pushed in the runup to Marathon's launch. The reason for this, Sides says, is the vagueness of the term.

"The problem is Helldivers 2 can be called an extraction shooter, but it's not. The genre name is so bad. I hate the genre name of extraction shooter. When I was working on Marathon, I was working with marketing, dying to be like: "Can we please create a different genre name, because extraction shooter is so dumb. It's the only genre where its name is a mechanic."

Sides then elaborated on why he brought up Helldivers 2. "Is that an extraction shooter because you extract? No, it's not like Tarkov at all. So, the terminology of the genre is already terrible; it really makes it hard to compare these games.

"It's why Arena Breakout and Tarkov, you can kind of look at those because they're both extraction shooters and they kind of fit the same mold. Comparing Arc Raiders to Tarkov just doesn't really fit. Comparing Arc Raiders to maybe like Rust could fit, and then Rust, it's that an extraction, because it's survival?"

Ultimately, Sides' issue is that "The genre doesn't even know what it is. You, as a player, how do you know what you're going to get?"

Personally, I'm not sure if Sides is correct when he says that extraction shooters are the only genre named after a mechanic. First-person shooters are at least partly named after their mechanics, for example, and you could make the case that stealth games are entirely named for their systems. In fact, is extraction even a mechanic in the same way that shooting or sneaking is? It basically just refers to leaving the map, after all.

However you slice it, this is why it's generally not a good idea to get too bogged down in what does or doesn't fit within a particular genre. Developers iterate upon existing game ideas and mechanics all the time, which is primarily how games evolve, so there's guaranteed to be some cross-pollination between genres, whatever they happen to be called.

Frankly, I think Bungie should be less concerned about whether it's making an extraction shooter, and more focused on whether it's making a good one. The Destiny 2 dev has run a gauntlet of delays, controversies and layoffs since the reboot was announced, while its parent company, Sony, is unhappy with its return on investment so far.

It's rare that I vibe with an extraction shooter, and really I've only properly fallen for one: The Forever Winter, which has been modestly successful but still seems to fly under a lot of radars. It launched in early access a year ago, but it's been on my mind again thanks to Arc Raiders, the current new hotness.

Before Arc Raiders' explosive launch, our reviewer, Elie, was telling me why they were digging it so much, and it became clear that it coincidentally shared a lot with what I remain convinced is the genre's high point. And I suspect that if you're having a blast with Arc Raiders at the moment, then you'll also have a great time with The Forever Winter.

Murder machines

To be clear, though, there are sizable differences, but that's also why I'm recommending it. If you're already playing Arc Raiders, there wouldn't be much point in me directing you towards something that's essentially identical.

For one, The Forever Winter is not a PvP deal. It's pure co-op PvE, with humans facing off against brutal AI enemies split into warring factions. But it's clear that for a significant portion of Arc Raiders players, PvP isn't part of the appeal—particularly those who have mostly been indulging in the solo side of things.

The Forever Winter loses no tension despite the lack of human opponents, though. Like Arc Raiders, this is a world that has been overrun with robots, with desperate human survivors now living underground, sending poor souls topside to scavenge for resources and water. But where Arc Raiders goes for bright colours and fun costumes, The Forever Winter instead channels the post-Judgement Day era of the Terminator universe.

We're talking full nightmare fuel: skeletal cyborgs ruthlessly hunting down humans; monstrous machines literally devouring their victims, snatching them up and swallowing them; building sized mechs stomping through battlefields made up of broken bones and machine parts. It takes a lot of cues from survival horror, and you'll end most of your runs covered in sweat.

The Forever Winter supports solo play, and that's when it feels overtly like a survival horror romp. You're not really meant to fight the machines. What can one person do against world-spanning armies controlled by AI overlords? Instead you're expected to shoot only when there's no other option, and the rest of the time you'll want to sneak through Hell, scrounging for scrap before you make a hasty escape.

This is true of co-op as well, to be fair, but through coordination your chance of survival greatly increases, and if you're downed your allies can rescue you. And as you get your hands on better equipment, and start to learn the maps and enemy weak points, you'll start to gain the confidence for more aggressive plays, working together to tackle some of the more terrifying machine nightmares.

Hell is other people

If you like the uncertainty that comes from teaming up with potential rivals in Arc Raiders, you also might enjoy the possibility of betrayal in The Forever Winter. There's friendly fire, you see, so there's always going to be that niggling doubt in the back of your mind: "Can I trust this rando?" The good news is that the game has systems in place to make betrayal risky, specifically in the form of your reputation with survivors. Thus, you won't be getting betrayed very often, but there's always a chance you've teamed up with a wrong 'un.

One significant difference, and the thing that I think makes The Forever Winter so much more fascinating than Arc Raiders, is the role of the AI. In Arc Raiders, the Arcs are simply killers. Their sole reason for existing is to kill players, which they do very well, or to be killed by players.

The Forever Winter's machine menace doesn't really care about you. See, the world has been destroyed by these opposing armies, which continue to fight over resources. You are largely beneath their notice. You're just a dirty human rooting around for junk. Don't get me wrong: if they see you, they'll try to kill you. But unless you start doing things that interfere with their missions, they won't be looking for you.

It's one of the most exciting things about The Forever Winter: that there is this huge war playing out all around you. Cyborgs and tanks and mechs mercilessly dismantling each other as you rifle through human detritus and try to get home with a nice haul. I've often found myself cowering in a muddy hole as the war rages above me, waiting for my chance to loot some corpses and scarper.

So you're simply a tiny part of this massive, horrifying eco system. And when I mentioned AI missions before, I wasn't talking about a bit of flavour: the AI has specific objectives that frequently have nothing to do with you, but which you can get in the middle of, disrupting their missions while putting a big target on your back.

There really isn't another extraction shooter that's so rich in atmosphere and tension, which is further elevated by what's genuinely some of the strongest post-apocalyptic art design that you'll have ever seen. It's straight up stunning, almost beautiful, even as it forces you to stare at a world that has been engulfed by atrocities.

But it's also a bit rough at times, lacking the polish and optimisation that you might be used to in Arc Raiders. It's an incredibly ambitious, elaborate early access game, and with that sometimes comes unwelcome friction. But there's just so much that makes putting up with any issues worth it.

The horrifying enemies, the base invasions, the distinct characters that serve as the game's classes, the sadistic difficulty—I love it. And it's been fascinating watching it develop, as the devs introduce new systems and adapt to player feedback.

These updates are often surprisingly transformative, though not always heartily welcomed by players that have gotten used to how things normally work, like the new tunnel system, which sees players spending more time underground. The idea is that you must traverse shifting tunnels to get to the game's war-torn regions, but by using expensive drones you can skip some of this—essentially using a fast travel system.

It's not the sort of game you should expect to get to grips with easily, and if the appeal of Arc Raiders is, for you, its more casual nature, then The Forever Winter might be a touch too stressful. But if you don't mind feeling perpetually terrified, if the idea of losing everything in a dark, miserable pit tickles your fancy, then you really should give this a shot.

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.

Arc Raiders can't match the long-running shooter's soaring highs, but it's drawn in a huge and consistent audience in its first week. For such a nascent game to prove nearly as popular as a goliath like Battlefield, with all its decadeslong history going for it, is a refreshing sight indeed.

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."

It's clear the people want that loop of scavenging and escaping in a more chill environment, as evidenced by the only other extraction shooter in Steam's top ten active users list right now: the irreverent single-player take, Escape From Duckov.

Once upon a time, it felt like Arc Raiders and Marathon were about to go head-to-head for the title of biggest extraction shooter; whatever happens to Bungie's spin on the genre, Arc Raiders is off to a remarkable head start.

As much as I love the nail-biting tension of extraction shooters, it's long been a genre obsessed with a rigorous gear grind and slow pace that make it almost impenetrable for new players, or those that can't dedicate more than a few hours a day or even a week. The one exception to this until now has been Hunt: Showdown, and while I can't recommend it enough, let's face it, it's not your typical extraction shooter.

So, for all these years, the extraction shooter has remained the dominion of a select few with enough time and patience to dedicate to it—and invariably trounce anyone who dares to give it a casual go.

Of course, with enough time and determination, you'll eventually join that elite band, but my point is that the genre isn't known for being welcoming and even semi-casual. If you want a genre to truly grow and experiment, encouraging a more diverse audience will do it.

Just as I thought perhaps the genre would never become truly mainstream—not even Bungie's Marathon seems to be breaking through—in comes Arc Raiders, somehow capturing the intensity and fear that any of its competitors do, but does so without requiring you to invest countless hours to keep up, nor feel like you're hit with the reset baton when you die. Loot matters, but it's not the be-all and end-all. Oh, and there are cool robots that make you shit yourself and encourage you to forge uneasy bonds with your fellow raiders.

What Arc Raiders nails on the head is a streamlined loot system that offers advantages as you move up tiers, but largely against its PvE robots than against other players in PvP. The best weapons, like the rare Hullcracker or Jupiter, specialise in punching through the toughest machines thanks to increased armour penetration.

Higher-tier assault rifles, pistols, and so on don't really do all that much more damage to players than the basic guns you'll find in free loadouts. Instead, they come with better handling, bigger magazines, or faster reloads. Better guns are better, but it's never the reason you win or lose a fight.

Even the way shields and healing work ensures the gap between cheap/common and expensive/rare items is never an insurmountable rift.

In other words, you'll never be a new player or have recently died and lost your items, and continually run into a brick wall of high-level, end-game players dominating every match.

This more casual, forgiving nature continues into Arc Raiders' many welcome quality-of-life additions. Firstly, there's Scrappy—your pet rooster—who will collect basic crafting materials for you between matches. This means that you're never without the basics, and you don't need to waste time collecting scrap metal, fabric, and so on. That's not the fun part of an extraction shooter, after all.

Then there are the handy item tooltips that explain exactly what each thing does and roughly where to look to get more. You're not often scratching your head, wondering why or where to pick up random tat. Combined with a generous, upgradable stash, easily accessible safe pockets on runs, and a quick auto-unloading backpack after a match, you spend less time faffing around in your inventory and more time with what makes Arc Raiders unique.

Of course, I can't forget the skill tree, which is a surprisingly perfect addition to an extraction shooter. Whether you extract alive or not, you'll have earned XP from looting, shooting, and more. Rewarding time-invested, you might think this undermines every other aspect and reintroduces the typical end-game advantage Arc Raiders evidently aims to avoid. However, it's balanced in such a way to feel like you're always progressing, but without making any particular skill too impactful overall. Again, you won't win or lose because of your skills.

Lastly, Arc Raiders also does something very unique with a controversial genre staple: wipes. In an active effort to avoid forcing account resets on players like Tarkov does, instead of mandatory wipes, those who want a fresh start can participate in Expedition Projects every eight or so weeks. It's effectively a quest to build a caravan and retire your character, starting mostly anew but with several bonuses for your next character. If that's not a perfect solution to both hardcore and casual players' concerns, then I don't know what is.

These efforts to finally make an extraction shooter for the masses without sacrificing what makes the genre so appealing have undoubtedly paid off, and I can't wait to see where it goes next.

Arc Raiders has a bunch of random crap for you to collect, from toasters and alarm clocks to cat beds, olives, scrap metal, and so on. Of course, there are also guns and other, more combat-focused items to loot, too. It's a lot to juggle, admittedly, but Arc Raiders has two features more extraction games need: detailed item cards and an optional auto-unloading backpack.

Each item, no matter how flashy or mundane, will have a description that tells you not only what it is and what it's used for, but also roughly where to find it. There are a few outliers with inaccurate or misleading descriptions, but for the most part, you know exactly what each item can do for you. Hell, some even clue you in on cool interactions, like throwing fireball burners as if they were grenades, or using fabric as a makeshift bandage, so it pays to read, folks.

It helps that there aren't actually any completely useless items in Arc Raiders to begin with, as everything is either equippable, recyclable, sellable, or used to craft or upgrade something else.

This even applies to items you need for quests or specific upgrades, where you can preview the required items and get an understanding of where to start your search.

It's never exact enough to spoil the fun of tracking down everything you need for any given upgrade, but you're not left in the dark or sent packing to Google. And that's greatly appreciated in a game where my loot is always on the line and I'm dealing with scary robots and players breathing down my neck.

It also has the knock-on effect of making it so you're not hauling around a bunch of items that you don't actually need. Got what you need for Scrappy or a specific quest? Then you can more or less ignore those items going forward.

Nevertheless, you'll inevitably come back from a run with a backpack filled to the brim with loot—unless you died and donated it to your killer, of course. That's where the auto-unload backpack button swoops in, my saviour. This quickly moves all the resources out of your inventory into your stash, but smartly skips over stuff like your weapons, ammo, and consumables in your quick slots.

In other words, you can dump everything you don't need for your next run and quickly return topside without having to mind-numbingly deconstruct your bag every time. After all, I'm here to kill robots and make friends over our mutual search for lemons, not do inventory admin like it's a punishment for actually extracting in one piece.

We've known since the earliest days of MMO PvP servers and tense DayZ standoffs that, given the opportunity, players love to kill each other after promising they wouldn't. So too is the case in extraction shooters, where truces tend to have a shorter expiration date than fast food lettuce, and your fellow man is hauling a sack of loot you could really use.

But Arc Raiders is different, at least so far.

After nearly 20 hours of scavenging the surface as a solo operator, I'm here to tell you the Arc Raiders community is remarkably chill. The vast majority of my encounters with other players have begun with words, not guns. Instead of reaching for my Rattler rifle, I first reach for the "Don't shoot!" emote. Most of the time, we both put our guns away, exchange pleasantries, and go our separate ways.

This has now happened dozens of times. If that sounds like exaggeration, know that I'm just as perplexed by the whole thing.

Since Arc Raiders' first beta earlier this year, I've been convinced that its propensity for friendliness couldn't last once a million-plus people got their hands on it. I figured it'd take less than a day for the folks who play Rust and DayZ like they're sociopath simulators to flood in and treat the golden rule like a chew toy. Some people have, obviously—my first run of the day ended in just a few minutes because a rando decided to shotgun me in the face—but it's amazing that those sour encounters have proven the exception (assuming you're not the aggressor).

Maybe the Arc community is a little different in your part of the world (I'm NA West), but the stories I'm reading online suggest a philosophy of talking first and shooting last has spread far and wide.

"The solo community is one of the chillest communities I’ve ever encountered in gaming," wrote user iReaddit-KRTORR on a top-upvoted post in the Arc Raiders subreddit. "Going solo, I fully expected it to be a free-for-all. Kill or be killed. All for one. But I’ve been largely surprised at how chill and helpful people are in solo. People largely don’t want to lose their gear needlessly and that is incentivizing passive play.

"Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still been KOed, betrayed, shot on sight, killed at the extraction, etc but that’s the game. And not being 100% certain is exciting too."

I knew Arc Raiders had something special going on when, the other day, I used proximity chat to talk a guy out of killing me after he'd already shot me three times. All I did was say in a genuine tone that "Hey man, I'm friendly! Just looking for a lemon for my chicken!" and it's like all the bullets fell out of his pistol. He told me where to find lemons, then let me go.

Then yesterday, I had the jump on a player who didn't check their corners as they strolled into the Water Treatment Facility in Dam. As I watched them loot, I weighed my options: If I say hello, they might shoot me knowing that I already took everything good from this room. If I just shoot first, I'll probably win without a scratch.

But I'd already had enough pleasant experiences with strangers that paying the kindness forward didn't really feel like a risk. I startled them with a "Don't shoot!," they responded with the same bark, and we both backed away.

As user TiSoBr has also observed, "the best weapon in ARC Raiders is talking."

"Pro tip: pointing your rifle at someone while yelling “friendly!” obviously sends mixed signals. Maybe just holster it instead. A bit of trust goes a long way."

It really does. The game is trending so far in the pacifist direction right now that some folks are giving "PvPers" grief about their life choices. It's gotten bad enough on the Arc Raiders subreddit that a mod had to clarify it's not OK to be toxic to players who choose to play like villains.

Indeed, putting the "PvP" in "PvPvE" is a valid way to enjoy Arc Raiders, and if you're grouping up with friends, it's probably even necessary. In my experience, pre-made groups are way more hostile, and in an interview with PC Gamer, Embark Studios design director Virgil Watkins confirmed that squads vs solo is like playing a different game.

"There's a very clear delta in how those two groups of people play. Solo players tend to be far more social when they do run into other people and far more combat avoidant in general," Watkins said. "You do get that 'I'm a lone gunslinger, I'm gonna take on all comers.' A lot of people there are quite happy to engage in PvP, loot quietly, sneak away. And then squads, I think, feel bolstered by having your friends with you, and so you will chase a lot of action and stuff. There's a lot more 'shoot first, ask no questions whatsoever.'"

There's probably more to unpack about how easy it is to adopt an "us vs them" mentality against all outsiders when you have numbers, and how games give strangers permission to pretend(?) to be terrible people, but I'll leave such observations to sociology experts. The point is, the solo experience is a different story, and I don't think it's just because lone wanderers are more vulnerable.

We stumbled upon a random flute player ontop of the tower. from r/ArcRaiders

The possibility for pacifism is built into Arc Raiders itself: Most players are entering matches looking for very specific resources needed to upgrade benches or craft better guns back at home. Those resources often aren't rare, so there's no reason to assume what you're looking for is in someone else's pockets. There are other reasons to want someone else's hard-earned loot—like picking up a better gun or selling all their stuff for an easy profit, but unlike a survival game, Arc Raiders does not define you by what you're holding. Players have permanent upgrades, skill trees, and challenges that are more interesting than proving you can out-shoot someone who wasn't even trying to fight.

Even Embark doesn't hide its enthusiasm for nonviolent encounters. Numerous tips on loading screens are essentially guides to deescalating conflict—deploying emotes, using a microphone, stowing your weapon. You don't even get that much XP for killing players.

I maintain the possibility that weeks, months, or years of Arc raiding could one day make grizzled cynics of its community. Incentives might change as folks max out their stashes, run out of benches to upgrade, and get bored with being nice. If that does happen, I hope Embark will think up incentives to maintain this surprisingly wholesome spirit that Arc Raiders has launched with. It's nice.

Even as a rejuvenated Battlefield series dominates the shooter limelight, sci-fi extraction shooter Arc Raiders is poised to be a hit. Public playtests have been popular enough to propel it to the third spot on Steam's most-wishlisted games list, and a playtest back in April was so well-received that many hoped Arc's developers would drop the game immediately.

The shooter wasn't quite done cooking back then, but the oven timer's finally dinging: Arc Raiders will be out on October 30.

We'll have a full review after getting some time in with the launch version, but for now you can check out our Arc Raiders review-in-progress (the short version: we like it). Below is everything we know about the launch-day rollout.

When does Arc Raiders launch?

Arc Raiders launches at 2:30 am Pacific on October 30, 2025 on Steam, the Epic Games Store, as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

The specific launch hour isn't listed on Arc's official site or Steam page, but developer Embark announced it on the Discord server. Here's when that is around the world:

• Los Angeles: 2:30 am PDT on Thursday, October 30
• New York: 5:30 am EDT on Thursday, October 30
• London: 9:30 am GMT on Thursday, October 30
• Berlin: 10:30 am CET on Thursday, October 30
• Sydney: 8:30 pm AEDT on Thursday, October 30
• Wellington: 10:30 pm NZDT on Thursday, October 30

As always, temporary server issues are a risk during the launch of a highly anticipated online game, so if you're on the US West Coast like me, I wouldn't recommend staying up till 2:30 in the morning hoping to get a few games in before bed, but you do you!

Does Arc Raiders have preloading?

Yes, you can preload Arc Raiders on Steam and consoles. Due to "an unforeseen issue," however, preloading is not available on the Epic Games Store.

Is Arc Raiders free-to-play?

Nope. At one point it was going to be free-to-play, but the developer changed its mind and decided to launch Arc as a $40 game, saying that the switch allowed it to "focus more on the engagement, fun, and impact on choices with regards to how the game evolves over time."

There's also a $60 deluxe version, and some pre-order bonuses for those who buy Arc before launch. You can see what's in the different versions on the Steam page.

Arc Raiders makes for a genuinely enjoyable extraction shooter experience, words that I really wasn't prepared to utter, given how painful I've found games like Escape from Tarkov in the past. But here I am, after a press preview and the beta weekend, increasingly convinced that Embark Studio's third-person PvEvP has hit the nail on the head.

I haven't had as long as I'd like with Embark's new extraction shooter, so this review is indeed in progress, with the final version coming sometime in the future when I've had a chance to properly experience it in all of its intersocial beauty.

The premise of Arc Raiders is simple: the world has gone to hell thanks to robots and AI, so now all the humans are holed up in small communities underground, with you and other raiders occasionally popping up to the surface to gather resources to trade, create gear, and upgrade your base.

On the surface, you face two threats: various Arc robots that'll hunt you down and other raiders who want to steal your stuff. You have to navigate these problems all while finding loot and extracting before the timer runs out.

Escaping Tarkov

As an extraction shooter, Arc Raiders is going to have to contend with the ultra-popular Escape from Tarkov—until now, the extraction shooter I've spent the most time with. And like I said, I found it pretty stressful. Expecting more of the same, I went into the Arc Raiders beta weekend nervous.

Thanks to this, my first game in Arc Raiders was way more traumatic than it needed to be. I couldn't stop looking over my shoulder, muttering to my team about how every place we found ourselves in had too many entry points and blind spots to be safe. I was bracing myself for confusion and death, as some sweaty player stripped me of all my earthly possessions and then called me trash. But my fears never came to pass.

Sure, PvP is an important part of Arc Raiders, especially when you're waiting for an extraction point to open, fending off any aggressive raiders who may want to make one last play for your loot. But all in all, PvP here doesn't seem like the focal point.

You can definitely mind your own business, go topside, get some loot, fight Arc robots, and then extract without seeing another person. At times, the only indication that there are other players on the map is the sound of distant gunfire.

I vibe with this. It presents a much more casual experience for players who perhaps don't have the time or energy to get too hardcore with learning maps or strategies. Tarkov clearly appeals to those who have sunk a tonne of time into learning its intricacies and enjoy its realistic, stressful situations. While Arc Raiders just kind of hands you a gun and some shields, sending you topside to have some fun. You even get a little pat on the back with bonus resources from your ever-resourceful pet cockerel, Scrappy, and skill tree upgrades when you fail to extract; it's quite forgiving.

If you want to focus on PvP and hunt other players down, you can definitely do so, but it just doesn't seem like the priority the game wants you to take. All the missions I've had so far encourage players to collect items topside or kill Arcs, not go after other players.

For this reason, Tarkov and Arc Raiders are actually quite different, both in vibes and execution. And I reckon it's for this reason that some more seasoned extraction shooter players may not feel like there's enough challenge or high stakes present in Arc Raiders and bounce off it. I think balancing the difficulty and stakes in this game may be a weak point going forward. So far, I like what I see in Arc Raiders, but that's not coming from someone who loves Tarkov.

Instead, the focal point in Arc Raiders is the Arcs—who would've guessed? Topside is full of these evil AI robots, some of which are huge, can pretty much one-shot you, and take a hell of a lot of firepower to kill. My squad even had to team up with another random group to just take down a Queen Arc in the preview, and that's the smallest of its kind.

Apart from these monoliths that you occasionally see roaming around, most Arcs are relatively small, but not exactly harmless. Different variations pose new threats to raiders, meaning you can't count any of them out. The number of times I've been caught off-guard by a sneaky popper jumping at me and exploding in my face, depleting me of almost all my shield, is quite frankly embarrassing, but navigating all of these PvE threats is what saves the action in Arc Raiders from being too dull and the maps being too empty.

Going topside

Dam Battlegrounds was my first taste of Arc Raiders, and boy, was I blown away by the scale and beauty. Rolling green hills with derelict buildings scattered, it's oddly pleasant to see an apocalyptic world that is still nice to look at. This map is also big enough for it to seem as if there's always more to see and scavenge, while also being small enough so that every threat seems too close for comfort.

Moments where my team and I would be peacefully stripping a location of all its resources, like wires and plastic that can be fashioned into new gear, were often interrupted by the chilling sound of gunfire. It could be an encounter between two enemy squads or a huge battle between some poor souls and a gigantic Arc robot. Usually, we'd never know. This feeling isn't unique to Arc Raiders, but as I said before, because Arc Raiders can be quite forgiving, I think it's important to at least try and up the tension at times during games.

I'm happy to say that this uneasy vibe seems to have carried over into the other maps: Spaceport, Buried City, and Blue Gate. Out of all the maps on offer, Buried City offers the most unique experience, as I spent most of my time jumping across the roofs of abandoned houses, avoiding all the Arcs lurking on the ground, instead of rushing through open fields, which take up most of the space in Dam Battlegrounds and Blue Gate. But I'd still like to see how these new maps will work when more players drop in.

Part of what makes the maps so cool to look at is the art direction in Arc Raiders that manages to pull off space-age retro, with bright colours and cool sci-fi suits that look like they jumped straight out of an old-school comic. Tonally, the whole game follows this lead of being colourful, fun, and in your face in a pretty charming way, whether that's how the guns look or what kind of quirky fun gear you can craft. You can also put little hats on Scrappy—absolute cinema.

Suit up

Then there's all the gear to be found and crafted. Everything I've seen so far really fits into the postapocalyptic, cobbled-together vibe that Arc Raiders is giving off. You can make sound grenades, grappling hooks, and a photoelectric cloak that can hide you from Arc enemies—this one really comes in handy.

But if you're like me and are terrified of losing all the cool gear you've just made, all you really need to bring with you is a gun, some ammo, a couple of grenades, and a shield to give you a bit of extra health—enough to protect you from the smaller, more finicky bots, like poppers or those damn face-hugger things. Sadly, your average shield won't do much against the biggest Arc threats.

I was also given a bit of a crash course on the guns during the short playtest, which allowed me to get my hands on the top-range shields and guns, which I didn't come across during the beta weekend.

The best guns include the Hullcracker, a gun that launches projectiles which will explode on impact with an Arc, the Bobcat, which was my favourite short-to-medium-range/all-round weapon, and the Arpeggio, which was the best gun I found for medium-to-long-range skirmishes. It did take some time to figure out which weapons worked best for my cowardly style of fighting, which just involves me staying really far away from people, but once I did, it made fights way more entertaining as I was quickly swapping between guns and making full use of my grenades. But there's still much more to discover, so I'll be looking into this aspect alongside Arc Raiders' progression more over the coming days.

I'm having way more fun with Arc Raiders than I'd expected to have, and I think its focus on being a more casual, vibey extraction shooter is a really great angle that will likely make it more palatable for a wider audience. My only reservation so far is whether Embark can find that sweet spot between fun and challenging, and it'll be interesting to see whether priorities change depending on what kind of playerbase it gathers.

Escape From Duckov might look like a goofy riff on Escape From Tarkov, and that's because it is one. But it's also a righteous way to breathe in the extraction shooter hype without all the hardcore PvP, and players are flocking to give it a shot. Today on Oct. 26, that number hit a screaming high of over 300,000 simultaneous players, according to SteamDB.

When PC Gamer news writer Lincoln Carpenter gave the game a spin, he conceded he thought the game was an elaborate bit at first. It won him over, though, as he said his impressions: "Under its deceptive meme game veneer, Escape From Duckov is an excellent topdown shooter that smartly repackages the extraction shooter in a satisfying singleplayer format."

Singleplayer extraction shooter might sound like a bit of an oxymoron—the genre is all about evading other players to escape with your life and loot—but Duckov is stuffed with all sorts of quests and a base to kit out with upgrades, essentially squeezing the genre into the framework of a roguelite RPG. There's also fishing, love it or hate it.

If it's true that Team Soda's angle was to inject a little virality into their game with the satirical title and cutesy animals, then bully for Team Soda; it worked. Regardless of the context, it seems like they've landed on a silly, enjoyable game people are hungry for more of. In this day and age, I feel compelled to cheer on any game making the dream work. Duckov is certainly a mite more successful than the studio's last game, which only ever hit a concurrent player count peak of 1,631.

If you're keen to duck and cover with the rest of 'em, Escape From Duckov is at a discounted price of $15.83 on Steam until Oct. 29.

To this day, I still get a good chuckle out of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Hero's Path feature, which shows you every single step you took on your journey, overlaid on the map. Just a few hours into my playthrough, there's a section where I die over and over again in the exact same location, only to run off for a good 10 hours and return, presumably triumphant, as I continued on my original path.

I won't lie, it's pretty embarrassing, and my partner will never let me live it down, as past me clearly struggled until frustration took hold and wandered off, head hung in defeat.

It's a feature that I wish we'd see more of in RPGs, letting us relive our adventures at the end and piece together the mystery of what we spent so much time doing via the map. What I didn't realise—until Arc Raiders came along—is that it's something extraction shooters sorely need, too, especially as a genre all about building tension and reflecting on your devastating losses.

Whether you live or die on a run in Arc Raiders, you'll first be greeted by the Journey page, not a boring ol' XP summary like every other extraction shooter (bar Arena Breakout, the only other in the genre, to my knowledge, that has a combat history map). This charts your entire match history with little Pac-Dots, showing you exactly where you went and what you did, including stuff like using items or fighting players. Hell, it's even got timestamps for each event.

As simple as it sounds, it's fun to look back at your route through each match. But it's even funnier when you see your dotted path frantically circling around one area, and you know in the back of your head that it's the moment you were cowering for your life, trying to avoid players or ARCs hot on your tail.

Of course, if you're a competitive player, you can also glean some handy, actionable ideas from it, like judging more optimal loot routes and whatnot. I'd rather just laugh at my prior mistakes, though, as you get to see the failure unfurling in real-time in a bird's-eye view.

Honestly, the only thing that I think would improve this Journey feature is if it marked other players' positions on the map. It'd be great to see how close you were to running into potential enemies or allies, as you'd either realise you were freaking out over nothing or that you narrowly avoided disaster by a hair's breadth.

I thought Escape From Duckov was a bit. The animal-themed parody game is a model with a long history: Often free-to-play, typically packed with animal puns, and generally suffering from a faint sense that the joke started to wear thin for everyone involved a long time ago.

But despite how Escape From Duckov presents itself, it actually doesn't waste much time on duck material. Yes, almost every NPC is some type of waterfowl, and yes, enemies quack when they notice you. But aside from an occasional duck egg consumable, there's not much duck humor going on at all.

In fact, you don't even really have to play as one: The duck customization options give you all the tools to craft a different bird entirely. Or a sort of Fall Guys-esque bean man. Or Heihachi from Tekken.

Maybe the developers at Team Soda, an internal game studio of Chinese media platform Bilibili, just love ducks—or maybe Duckov's theme was just a bit of canny buzz marketing. If it was, I'm glad I fell for the bait. Under its deceptive meme game veneer, Escape From Duckov is an excellent topdown shooter that smartly repackages the extraction shooter in a satisfying singleplayer format.

You might, as some of my PC Gamer peers have, immediately ask whether a singleplayer game can really be an extraction shooter. To that, I'd answer that the extraction shooter heads among you have just been playing PvP roguelikes this whole time. There's no reason the core tension of an extraction shooter—of risking your hard-won kit in pursuit of cooler gear—shouldn't work in singleplayer, and Escape From Duckov proves the theory.

Quacktical

It helps that Duckov is a damn good top-down shooter. It nails the tension of creeping through hostile territory with a limited sight cone, never knowing whether the crates and cover ahead might be masking a duck with a fully-loaded shotgun.

Swinging my weapon around has a pleasant balance between weight and responsiveness: Because taking aim is never so immediate that it's inconsequential, positioning and situational awareness are important when sweeping a camp of duck militia.

There's plenty of toothy (beaky?) mechanics involved in Duckov gunplay, too. Guns can be equipped with an assortment of tiered attachments and loaded with different ammo types, affecting their effective ranges, recoils, shot grouping, armor penetration, "movement coefficients," and more. Finding a gun that can be loaded out to fit my personal tastes feels like a real prize—which makes it all the more painful when I find myself outmatched in a gunfight after pushing my luck.

There are plenty of typical extraction shooter trappings here: You're accompanied by a pooch who can safeguard a single item that you'll hold onto when you're killed. Between runs, you can put the miscellaneous junk you've collected to use in building base facilities, crafting items, upgrading vendors, and completing quests.

But where quests and missions in other extraction shooters can feel arbitrary or perfunctory, Duckov's questgivers make for a more directed sense of progression. Their objectives gradually introduce new extensions of the crafting and vendor economy, guiding me towards different map regions as my expeditions steadily progress deeper into enemy territory.

Longer term quests, meanwhile, provide some helpful structure when I might otherwise be tempted towards aimlessly repeating runs to add more junk to my growing storage hoard. Stockpiling more rifles might feel reassuring, but it'll only do so much for me while the black-feathered mercenary commander Pato Chapo remains unkilled.

It's not without its frustrations. On more than one occasion, I've accepted a quest asking me to collect some electronic scrap or medical equipment I'd sold just minutes earlier, having had no way to know it was something rare or worth keeping. Other times, I've extracted from a run to discover the item I'd assumed was worth double what I'd dropped to make room for it was actually worth pennies.

Thankfully, Duckov's got Steam Workshop support, and there's already a respectable library of UI tweaks and mods to give some extra info when I'm debating whether a cabinet's contents is worth making backpack space for. That said, because so much of Duckov's player base is Chinese, it's not always immediately clear what kind of mod I'm looking at, but that's the price you pay for being anglophonic.

As for the duck stuff: I barely notice it. And when I do, it's because it's kind of delightful to see a mallard with a submachinegun walking around with a slight physics-y wobble. I'm happy to take an occasional duck over another serving of generic tacticool grunge.

Speaking as someone who loves a good roguelike but always bounced off the notion of losing my loot to a multiplayer murder (my competitive shooter synapses were shorted out by critical amounts of Call of Duty in my late teens), Escape From Duckov puts the extraction shooter in terms I understand. I get it now. I've tasted the juice, and the juice is good. The ducks are alright.

Now I just have to figure out how to get my favorite rifle back after eating a sniper round on my last looting run.

If you'd asked me a couple weeks ago, I'd have said the extraction shooter craze was starting to slow down. The last few days have proved how wrong I'd have been. Over the weekend, as metric boatloads of players swarmed the Arc Raiders server slam, a singleplayer extraction shooter was drawing its own crowds: Escape From Duckov, a top-down game of looting and shooting with warfighting waterfowl that sold more than 500,000 Steam copies in its first 72 hours.

"What an exciting weekend for all ducks! More than 500,000 Ducklings have now joined the world of Duckov! At this moment, the entire dev team is quacking with joy and flapping our wings in excitement," Duckov developer Team Soda said in a Steam news post announcing the successful launch figure. "A heartfelt thank-you to every single Duckling for your incredible support—together, we've reached this truly meaningful Duckov milestone! We'll keep working hard to make sure every update lives up to your expectations!"

Just three hours before time of writing, Escape From Duckov reached a peak Steam player count of 182,000—nearing the Arc Raiders playtest's weekend concurrent peak of 189,000. That's notable for a few reasons. One: it's ducks. Two: Unlike Arc Raiders, Duckov—developed by an internal gamedev studio of Chinese media platform Bilibili—is a singleplayer game, which doesn't often lend itself to high concurrent player counts.

Speaking as someone who prefers to scrounge for loot without the looming threat of PvP combat, I'm getting a lot of encouraging signs here. One of those signs being how a duck looks surprisingly adorable while holding an assault rifle.

Judging from Steam reviews, all that attention is translating into an extremely positive player response. Duckov's already sitting at an Overwhelmingly Positive review rating, with a 95% positivity rate after more than 6,200 reviews.

Unsurprisingly, considering Duckov is a game developed and published by a major Chinese company, over 4,400 of those reviews are from Steam users using Simplified Chinese. But at time of writing, English reviewers are actually slightly more positive than reviewers worldwide, with 96% of the 890 English-language reviews coming in as positive compared to 94% of Chinese reviewers.

If you're hoping to face other player-controlled ducks in combat, however, you'll have to look somewhere else—like Duckside, a duck-themed Rust-like that's apparently existed for over a year. Or the much-loved 2015 side-scrolling multiplayer shooter Duck Game. We've been doing ducks with guns for a while, it turns out.

It might feel like there's been a shedload of extraction shooters lately, but the genre still seems to crackle with untapped potential. Two heavy hitters—the reboot of Bungie's venerable shooter Marathon and Embark's fresh up-and-comer Arc Raiders—are nearly here, and both have had a chance to gear up with playtests. Speaking with PC Gamer US editor-in-chief Tyler Wilde, Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins said the shared timing made for a fortuitous opportunity.

"It was very coincidental that they had their test around the time we did. To my knowledge, I don't think any of us knew that was going to happen," Watkins said. "It was a very great A/B test for us, because obviously they made decisions that we didn't, and vice versa. So we could kind of compare and contrast how some of those things shook out."

Of course, Arc Raiders and Marathon are different games, but it's hard not to compare the two. Timing aside, when PC Gamer staff writer Morgan Park played both back-to-back earlier this year, he noted "both studios need their extraction shooters to be a hit," adding he was "skeptical there's enough interest in the inherently un-casual genre to support them both."

For Watkins, it was a chance to see how players reacted to the two games' divergent designs: "[It] was quite interesting to follow in what players thought about those certain things, or what did work in their context and didn't, and what may have worked in ours."

He said he hasn't been holding a magnifying glass up to the game; after all, most of Marathon's tests have been limited-access. But he only rooted the game's successes on, saying he "[found] the art style very evocative … I'm personally curious to see how that ends up. I hope to see more of that in the future."

Sci-fi extraction shooter Arc Raiders is doing one last public playtest this weekend before its launch at the end of October, but quite a few players felt it was already good to go after its successful April playtest—or just wanted it to release ASAP so they could keep playing, perhaps more accurately.

That Arc playtest compared favorably to a parallel Marathon playtest, as Morgan pointed out at the time, and was praised for its technical soundness. But the plan then was to release Arc in October (although the date hadn't yet been announced) and it stayed that way, because despite the fans angling for a surprise drop, it was "absolutely not ready," design director Virgil Watkins told PC Gamer in an interview this week.

"It was interesting to see how many people wanted us to drop it, or even shortly after [the playtest], expected us to drop the game," said Watkins. "But on our end, the game was absolutely not ready. I'm happy that a lot of people thought the game ran well, but we had a lot of optimization to still do. We had a bunch of features we still needed to finish. There were bugs, and thankfully they didn't show up too much in a lot of people's footage, but there were some bad bugs. We had to fix a lot of things."

There've been feature additions since then, too, in particular to late-game progression. Trials add challenges to the progression system with a leaderboard, and the Expedition Project, which Watkins explained in a recent blog post, is Arc's answer to server resets.

Rather than resetting everyone, Expeditions allow the most dedicated players to forfeit their progress in exchange for the Zen feeling that comes with rejecting attachment to gun attachments, special account unlocks, and other not-yet-finalized rewards. It sounds a bit like Call of Duty's Prestige system, which has many variations but in its most basic form let you give up all your unlocks and start over at level 1 for the sake of bragging rights.

Balance was a concern, as well: "People thankfully thought it was in a pretty good state [in the April playtest], but we have the telemetry," Watkins said, laughing. "We know certain things were not exactly doing what they should have."

And in the world of live service games, you're not really ready to launch until you've at least got some nearly-ready new stuff to roll out in the weeks after the release date.

"We obviously added a new map since Tech Test 2 that you're aware of, and we've teased the fifth, which players will get to start engaging with, kind of, very, very shortly after launch, in a roundabout way," Watkins said. "And then just bolstering our item sets, our enemy sets, new map conditions, so they saw the night raids and a few other things in Tech Test 2, and we just extended those to offer new types of play and ways of playing."

Arc Raiders is set to launch on October 30, and this weekend's server slam has already put up impressive numbers: over 185,000 Steam concurrents at last check.

Note, though, that the full game won't be free like the playtests. Perhaps inspired by the success of Helldivers 2, developer Embark switched from free-to-play to a $40 price tag last year. Watkins said that the switch was a relief from his perspective, as it allowed the team to focus on designing fun crafting and progression systems rather than having to "dangle that cosmetic carrot" in front of players all the time.

After the very successful Arc Raiders beta stole the spotlight from Bungie's Marathon (if it had any to begin with), Embark is turning on the servers once again for the Arc Raiders Server Slam; it's effectively an open beta. This is your final chance to check out Embark's extraction shooter before it launches on October 30, so you don't want to miss it.

Plus, the Server Slam session also includes a look at some brand-new content, namely quests, that you'll see plenty more of in the full game. Below, I'll go over everything you need to know to join the Arc Raiders Server Slam.

Arc Raiders Server Slam times for your region

The Arc Raiders Server Slam playtest starts Friday, October 17 and runs until Sunday, October 19, giving you the weekend to stress test the game for free on PC (Steam and Epic), PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. More specifically, it starts at the following times based on your region:

• West Coast US: 6 am PDT
• East Coast US: 9 am EDT
• UK: 2 pm BST
• Europe: 3 pm CEST
• Australia: 12 am AEDT (October 18)
• New Zealand: 1 am NZST (October 18)

The Server Slam ends on Sunday, October 19 at:

• West Coast US: 8 am PDT
• East Coast US: 11 am EDT
• UK: 4 pm BST
• Europe: 5 pm CEST
• Australia: 2 am AEDT (October 20)
• New Zealand: 3 am NZST (October 20)

You don't need to sign up or get a code to access the Arc Raiders open beta, so just go ahead and download it now—it's around 35gb on PC. Oddly, it's still a bit tricky to find right now, but you can download the Arc Raiders Server Slam on:

• Steam: If you played the previous playtest, the Server Slam is actually considered an update to that original download, so check your library. If you're new, search for 'Arc Raiders - Playtest' on the store page, and if it doesn't appear for you yet, restart Steam. There have been a few issues accessing it on Steam, so if this is affecting you, try downloading it on Epic Games Store instead.
• Epic Games: You can download it on Epic just by searching for 'Arc Raiders - Server Slam'.

Arc Raiders Server Slam rewards

You'll actually be able to earn an exclusive Server Slammer backpack cosmetic just for participating in the Server Slam session—no unlock challenge or anything required. While this reward will automatically unlock and carry over to the full game after launch, any progression you make during the Server Slam session will not, so don't grind too hard.

Arc Raiders Server Slam content

The Server Slam adds some new content compared to the previous beta. You'll be able to play the Dam Battlegrounds map and have access to the same progression and crafting systems, but you can also test out portions of the quest system. Plus, this map also includes some special conditions like electromagnetic storms, night raids, and "perhaps even a visit from the Queen", which sounds horrifying.

• Weapons and Gear: Early and mid-tier equipment will be available for you to experiment with, but some things will be locked until launch.
• Blueprints: These expand your Raider’s ability to make and modify weapons and gear. All blueprints can be found, but those of the highest tier will not be craftable during the Server Slam.
• Raider Deck: You’ll be able to test out the Raider Deck functionality with one page of items to unlock.
• Workshop: Basic crafting stations (Weapon, Equipment, and Medical) are available, but upgrades aren’t possible for this limited test.

You'll be able to see the following systems in-game, but you won't actually have access to or be able to interact with them:

• Projects (Expeditions): Long-term missions where a Raider leaves the Rust Belt permanently. Some progress resets, but key rewards and benefits carry over.
• Trials: A proving ground for seasoned Raiders. Complete the challenge, return safely to Speranza, and vie for a place on the leaderboard. You’ll have to wait for launch to climb ranks and earn seasonal rewards.
• Codex: A growing archive of your Raider’s accumulated knowledge. Here you will collect stories, people, and places as you progress deeper into the world.

Not everyone approves of visible damage numbers in shooters, but I love seeing digits appear above my enemies' heads—I like to imagine they can see them, too, and know their demise is near.

During today's PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct, we got a new look at Gravebound, an upcoming third-person extraction shooter set in a post-apocalyptic world where glowing numbers do indeed pop out of your targets.

This is a PvEvP experience, so you'll have to contend with deadly robots as well as other players going after the same loot you are.

There's some bullet hell-style chaos here. One of the enemies fires streams of creeping, malevolent orbs as well as missile-like projectiles that shoot straight up in the air before heading right for you on a diagonal. I might have to bust out the protractor to avoid getting hit. We also see an arena where circles of electricity force you to dance around them lest you get zapped.

Luckily, you have a variety of weapons to deal with these foes: From shotguns and sniper rifles—where each pellet causes its own number to pop up above an enemy's head, fantastic—to assault rifles and pistols.

There's a free public play test for Gravebound that starts right now. So, if you want to jump in with a friend, you can download it on Steam. The full game launches later this year.

Check out every game, trailer, and announcement in the PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct.

Escape from Tarkov, a primary influence on the extraction shooter genre, is still technically in beta, if you can believe it, but it won't be for long.

Eight years after opening its doors to players, Tarkov will finally hit 1.0 on November 15, 2025, a day after Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 releases.

According to developer Battlestate Games, the shooter has received more than 400 updates during its beta period.

"We would like to express our sincere gratitude to every player whose dedication and active participation throughout the testing period played a key role in the development of Escape from Tarkov," said the studio.

Eight years really stretches the definition of a "beta," and Tarkov is of course far from the only game to do so. Star Citizen is probably the most dramatic active example: 12 years after its first playable module released, the space sim's latest version is "Alpha 4.3.0." Not even beta yet!

At this point, I'm resigned to a future where "beta" and "early access" just mean the same thing as "released." In cases like Tarkov, they basically already do: No one really shrugs off the beta's flaws because 'it's not out yet,' especially as money's being spent on it.

Case in point: A number of Tarkov players were mighty unhappy recently after a big patch that reset player progress and altered the economy and progression.

Although No More Room in Hell 2 launched into early access a little too early for its own good, I still think it was a better zombie game than it gets credit for. Not only did it capture the essence of zombie horror with its eerie, pitch-black nights and undead hordes that seemed fairly unthreatening right up until they steamrollered you in their dozens. But it also had a clever concept where players started the game alone, having to find each other within the map before converging on the objective.

That organic team-building was a big part of what made No More Room in Hell 2 interesting to me, even if its single map became repetitive after a while. Now, developer Torn Banner has added a new feature to the game that adds a further twist to team assembly.

This comes as part of No More Room in Hell 2's Reanimation++ update. Torn Banner describes this as "one of our smaller updates", which is interesting considering the implications it has. The feature in question is called 'Early individual extraction', and it basically allows players to flee the map once the player count drops to a certain threshold.

By default, a round of NMRiH2 includes eight players dispersed across the map's fringes, who gradually come together to complete a central objective. Of course, some players might not make it that far, and even banding together won't necessarily stop players from being picked off by the Zeds.

Up to this point, decimated teams had to just soldier on or, as is more likely the case, drop out of the game entirely through frustration. But as of this update, if the remaining player count falls as low as three, players can choose to abandon the mission in-game, fleeing to one of several underground bunkers where their character can safely extract from the map on their own.

Departing a round in this manner isn't exactly encouraged, netting players "significantly fewer" credits than completing the objective, and giving their character zero experience. But it also means that your character will live to fight another day, which is a win in and of itself considering death in No More Room in Hell 2 is permanent.

While this change has a pragmatic function, namely discouraging players from rage quitting and giving failed missions a more interesting ending, it's also fascinating from a thematic perspective. Imagine seeing your two surviving teammates backed into a corner by a horde, and having to choose whether to help them or leg it to the nearest bunker. Imagine being one of those teammates, and seeing that other player run for the hills, or alternatively, risk their necks to help you when you know they could have left you for dead. That's cool.

This extraction system is by far the biggest addition Reanimation++ makes, but it isn't the only one. The update also throws in a new weapon, the .22 calibre Gruber 922, which makes up for its small cartridge with a high ammo count and attachment flexibility. Elsewhere, there's a new responder voice with male and female versions, while zombies that are knocked down now take 100% bonus damage for quicker eliminations.

But it's that extraction twist that draws me toward NMiRH2 like a freshly cracked brain cavity. I may wait a little bit longer, though, as next month it'll get a considerably bigger update that adds a whole new map called Broadway. It's worth noting that No More Room in Hell 2 still has a "Mixed" rating on Steam, with players complaining about bugs and balance issues, as well as its differences from the original, 2012 mod. But I reckon the sequel has plenty of merits of its own, and could still prove a winner by the time it hits 1.0.

There are no big surprises here: Borderlands 4 is more Borderlands. But if you're all extraction-shootered-out and a regular old co-op campaign is what you're looking for (I can sympathize), then I think you've got something to look forward to. Specifically: a big world, some fun new movement abilities, a cool hover bike, and fewer pop culture gags (at least so they say!).

The majority of my time in Borderlands 4, which I played for a few hours during a visit to 2K's offices last month, was spent exploring its uncharacteristically green opening environment. It's set on a new planet, Kairos, which had been hidden from the universe until series protagonist Lilith went and teleported a moon into its orbit at the end of Borderlands 3.

That has to be a cosmic war crime, but there's a silver lining: The disaster disrupted the rule of an order-obsessed dictator called The Timekeeper, and the latest crew of vault hunters have now arrived on a planet in revolt.

First contact

The grassy Kairos landing site isn't as evocative of Old West outlaws and post-apocalyptic gang warfare as Pandora's badlands, and I slightly missed those Mad Max vibes. Like previous Borderlands games, however, Borderlands 4 will take us to multiple environments, including in this case a snowy region, the "shattered lands of Carcadia Burn," and The Timekeeper's fortress city.

The journey may be ever-so-slightly more serious than we're used to: After the excesses of Borderlands 3, which included a poop launcher called the Porta-Pooper 5000 and an extended Tommy Wiseau impression, Gearbox has promised to keep Borderlands 4's sense of humor more grounded in the Borderlands universe. The first important NPC I met stressed staying hydrated, so it feels like the studio followed through.

In fact, I never thought I'd be saying this, but I wouldn't have minded if my time with Borderlands 4 had been zanier. I'm sure I'll think differently whenever Claptrap shows up, though. Borderlands may have been retuned, but it hasn't been transformed.

Case in point: The new movement abilities, like grappling, double jumping, and gliding, will be familiar to any modern FPS player. And they're fun. I liked using them to quickly close the distance on hiding enemies and get above them. The butt stomp attack (technically a fist slam, but whatever) you can perform while airborne is fun to spam, too.

A whole new world

My favorite part of the demo was the hoverbike. Unlike in previous Borderlands games, where you have to find a Catch-a-Ride station to "digistruct" vehicles, Borderlands 4 equips you with a "Digirunner" that can be materialized whenever and wherever you want with just a button press, at least out in the overworld.

It makes this amazing noise, a sort of harmonic fan blade whine that tickles the brain stem. It can rotate on a dime and strafe, which makes aiming its front-mounted minigun relatively easy, but it's also fast and its momentum prevents it from changing direction instantly, so it takes finesse to round corners and thread gaps between trees.

I only wished that when I plowed into enemies the bike would send them flying, but I didn't manage any good punts. Maybe I just needed to try harder.

The more convenient access to transportation pairs with Gearbox's refrain that this Borderlands is the biggest Borderlands yet. I had to stay in my preview playpen, so I didn't get to experience that bigness myself, but there was lots to find in the hilly grasslands I was constrained to.

Granted, Borderlands is mostly about finding guns and shooting people with them, so I mostly found guns and people to shoot. (And robots and aliens, to be fair.)

During one excursion, I swam through a partially submerged drain pipe into a secret base full of resistance fighters, where I found a cache of guns. I also shot my way into a little facility and pressed a button to release a tethered weather balloon thing and although the premise escapes me, this somehow awarded me a vault key fragment that in the full game could be used to access one of the vaults of legend, challenging side activities.

You can also zip up the rope to the balloon high in the sky and then survey the landscape as you glide down. Why you can glide wasn't explained, but I didn't really care. I landed on a pillar I wouldn't have otherwise been able to reach, which earned me more guns, as you might've guessed. It felt like something you'd do in an old 3D platformer.

The looting

The procedural 'bazillion guns' loot system that defines Borderlands alongside its art style and sassy robot has seen some tweaks—nothing wild, but it all seems reasonable.

Gearbox says that legendary guns will feel more legendary this time around, as they've lowered the drop rates, but that regular guns ought to be fun to use, too. Instead of using ammo, heavy weapons like rocket launchers now reload on a cooldown, so you don't have to save them just for bosses. And guns can now be made with parts from multiple manufacturers, which is helpful because certain equippable bonuses are tied to manufacturers.

Since I only had a few hours to play Borderlands 4, I mostly stuck to the gun selection Gearbox kitted me out with, and I was impressed by the variety in my curated armory. I used multiple sniper rifles with different firing mechanisms: A classic bolt-action rifle, one that fired two quick shots, one that charged up briefly and then fired a bunch of slow but powerful projectiles with a distinct pew pew pew sound.

I encountered lots of fun secondary fire modes, too: grenades, rockets, a disc that bounces between enemies.

My favorite gun was Amassing Buzzymuzz, an assault rifle with a secondary grenade launcher, huge ammo capacity, and a fire rate fast enough to make shots sound almost like a continuous tone. Its "Ripper-Licensed Mag" meant it had to charge before firing, complicating its handling but also emphasizing its power as a bullet hose.

The shooting

My time with Buzzymuzz took place in the second half of my session, when I left behind the starting area and loaded a save with a level 20 character—Rafa, the Exo-Soldier, who's all about firepower—at the start of a Primordial Vault, a challenging side dungeon with a boss. (2K isn't releasing video of this part of the game yet, so I can't show it to you.)

The vault was a series of floating rock platforms under the dim glow of celestial gasses, each of which has to be cleared of waves of enemies on the way to a boss fight.

Some of Borderlands 4's baddies are, essentially, wizards: Floating wardens with big hats who shoot sparkly magic at you. There are mechanical martial artists with glowing red faces that spin giant blades at you. There are badass dudes in golden armor. And as I backpedaled and fended off the swarms of these guys I was always at risk of blundering over the edge of the level or into a lava pit—good thing for the new double jump.

It was tough going it alone, but when my Buzzymuzz was buzzing I had a few satisfying gun-ballet moments: Buzzymuzz a guy half to death, strafe behind a rock pillar to switch to the secondary grenade launcher, pop back out to launch a grenade into his face, flick one of Rafa's throwing knives into the head of another guy, jump over a gap in the rocks. Arena shooter ninja stuff.

Bossed around

I did not look quite so much like a gunkata master when I got to the Vault's boss, a giant metal scorpion ape who attacked with a pair of pointy, segmented tails. Jumping over his sweeping tail attacks wasn't too hard, but he also had a piercing attack and I misunderstood the related visual cue for an embarrassingly long time, dodging too early.

It's not the most novel boss design stuff, but I'm glad he and the rest of the vault weren't a pushover. (I did get it done in co-op thanks to another previewer who was better at it than me despite just coming off a very long flight; thank you to that guy!)

Back when there was more hair on my head, I reviewed the original Borderlands. I said at the time that it wasn't as charming as Fallout 3 or Half-Life 2, and that the story didn't matter much, and that the quests were boring MMO-style 'go here and kill things' tasks, but that it was really about "finding weapons and shooting things with them" and that was good enough for me.

Almost 16 years later, a lot of people actually do care about the Borderlands story, and I appreciate more now that it at least has a signature style, because there's some excruciatingly bland stuff out there. (At least I feel something about Claptrap.)

Otherwise, my feelings haven't changed a lot, and there's something to respect in Gearbox's consistency. While Bungie struggles to drum up excitement for Marathon, Gearbox is still refining the same four-player co-op shooter format that made it famous. Words like "extraction," "roguelike," and "survival elements" are nowhere to be seen.

There are some new Unreal Engine 5 lighting flourishes that I didn't really find necessary, but if that's the only modern excess, then I applaud the restraint. The main thing you do in Borderlands 4 is find weapons and shoot things with them, except now you can double jump and there's a cool bike. Fine by me.

It has not been smooth sailing for Bungie's Marathon reboot since it was revealed in March 2023 with a stylish but ultimately empty teaser. After two years of questions and uncertainty, PC Gamer's resident Bungie whisperer Tim Clark declared it "definitely good" after getting hands-on time with it in April. But he had significant concerns nonetheless, "from a spooked Sony, to the inherently hostile nature of the genre, and Bungie's own chequered history with Destiny's live service model, monetisation, and especially PvP balancing." And with the game now just three months away—it's currently set to launch on September 23—there's a low-key but persistent expectation that it will be delayed.

PlayStation Studios chief Hermen Hulst indicated no such movement during a recent "fireside chat," however, saying that Sony continues to see live service games as a "great opportunity," even as he acknowledged that they're faced with "unique challenges" as well.

Naturally, Concord came up during his remarks: Hulst said "some really good work" went into it, but that ultimately it was "insufficiently differentiated to be able to resonate with players." (Lest there be any doubt, this "chat" was aimed squarely at investors.)

Concord was one of the most spectacular videogame failures in recent memory, put out to pasture just two weeks after it went live. That, Hulst said, prompted a review of development processes at Sony to figure out how it all went so wrong, "and to ensure that we're not going to make the same mistakes again."

"We've introduced much more rigorous processes for validating—for revalidating our creative, our commercial, our development assumptions and hypotheses, and we now do that on a much more ongoing basis," Hulst said. "That's the plan that will ensure we're investing in the right opportunities at the right time, all while maintaining much more predictable timelines."

For Marathon specifically, Hulst said Sony is aiming to make "a very bold, very innovative and deeply engaging" game, and it's being very careful to ensure that all the necessary boxes are being checked.

"We're going through the test cycles, we're monitoring the closed alpha cycle that the team has just gone through. We're taking all the lessons learned, we're using the capabilities that we've built in analytics and user testing to understand how audiences are engaging with the title."

Interestingly, Hulst admitted that some of the feedback on Marathon so far has been "varied," which isn't the sort of thing you typically hear from videogame executives talking up the next big thing, especially when it's only a few months from launch. I would say that also holds true for his words about applying analytics to closed alpha testing to get a better idea of how things are going, which sounds to me like the sort of thing developers would typically be doing much earlier in the process.

But, acknowledging again that this showcase is for investors and not gamers, the focus here is not how awesome Marathon is going to be, but how Sony is going all-out to ensure it doesn't end up with another Concord debacle on its hands.

"The constant testing and the constant re-validation of assumptions that we just talked about, to me is just so valuable to iterate and to constantly improve the title," Hulst said. "So when launch comes, we're gonna give the title the optimal chance of success."

Which is good, because Marathon needs to be an unqualified success for Bungie: Destiny 2 is a fading flower, and Sony's impatience with the studio's floundering is becoming increasingly evident. A report in May said morale at the studio is in "free fall" following an art theft fiasco, and an apparently widespread belief among employees that a Marathon failure could spell the end of the studio.

In a supporting document, Sony still pegs Marathon for release in its 2025 fiscal year. That doesn't preclude a delay, though: Sony's FY25 doesn't end until March 31, 2026.

As revealed during the PC Gaming Show 2025, survival-meets-extraction shooter Lost Rift is in-line for a shiny new Steam Next Fest demo.

Despite starting out as a niche genre, extraction shooters are surprisingly popular nowadays, whether it's trekking through the demon-infested swamps of the Louisiana Bayou in Hunt: Showdown, or more recently, the sleek and stylish sci-fi vibes of Marathon's colony. One thing I haven't seen before, though, is a game that combines survival gameplay with extraction.

In Lost Rift, you find yourself marooned on a desert island called Pioneers' Landing, where you'll have to survive with up to five friends, jumping through the usual survival game hoops of building a base, crafting equipment, and braving the island's ever-changing weather as you complete PvE focused-missions.

Where the game really gets interesting, though, is with its PvPvE focused expeditions. While your home island is limited to PvE, when you feel sufficiently geared and good to go, you can head out on expeditions to the unstable zones—this is where the extraction gameplay comes in, letting you risk it all against other players and enemies, but potentially score big and acquire loot and materials you need to progress.

It's a pretty fun concept, placing risky extraction gameplay within the somewhat safe and familiar boundaries of the survival genre. As you progress, you'll also encounter different biomes that each bring their own survival challenges, as well as pretty impactful weather events. Lightning strikes, fires, and hurricanes might threaten your camp, while heavy rain and fog can impact exploration, making it trickier to navigate or rivers harder to cross.

Fancy that? You can play Lost Rift's Steam Next Fest demo from tomorrow if it sounds like your perfect genre mashup—and, of course, you can wishlist it on Steam between times.

Check out every game, trailer, and announcement in the PC Gaming Show 2025