ARC Raiders, the newest extraction shooter from Embark Studios, has exceeded expectations by reaching a peak of over 350,000 concurrent players on Steam alone. Unfortunately, its servers are now overloaded due to the amazing surge.

Player data indicates that ARC Raiders peaked at 354,836 concurrent players, which was a significant milestone for the studio and ranked among the most played games on the platform. However, there was a catch to that success: matches are now tedious. A lot of players complain about spending more than ten minutes in line, losing connection in the middle of a game, or seeing “IN QUEUE” screens all the time.

Embark Studios acknowledged the stress they’re under in a formal statement and disclosed that they had temporarily implemented login queues to reduce overload. They urged players to be patient while the fixes are implemented and thanked them for their enthusiasm.

It appears that timing and scale are the issue. The sudden influx of hundreds of thousands of players at once revealed matchmaking and server capacity flaws for a game that provides both PvE and PvPvE excitement. Some players waited 30 minutes to view the main menu, and others have vented their frustrations on forums and community centers.

Since ARC Raiders is also available on console platforms and Steam only counts PC players, the actual concurrent user count may be even higher, which would increase the load issues.

Official website: https://arcraiders.com/en/