The number of players in Arc Raiders has dropped rapidly

When Arc Raiders first launched last October, it was an instant hit and became an absolute powerhouse of a live service game for the rest of 2025. It brought in hundreds of thousands of players on Steam alone, reaching a peak player count of 481,966 a month after launch, and steadied the ship for a while, almost at the beginning of that year.

However, it hasn't been smooth sailing for the Arc Raiders since then. First reported by Forbes, it appears that the game has suffered a rather notable decline in recent months and has been losing players at a rather alarming rate. It is now a game that struggles to reach daily peaks of 100,000 players, and at the time of writing, the game currently has a 24-hour peak of 90,138 players.

Arc Raiders has suffered a brutal player drop

Arc Raiders Bald Person Stares At Camera

Of course, nearly 100,000 players a day on a single platform is an incredible feat, but the sudden drop in players is still probably cause for concern. Arc Raiders was on top of the world just a few months ago, regularly sitting at the top of Steam's most played games list, but now it's not even in the top ten, being scrapped with games like Apex Legends and Overwatch. Not a bad place to be, but nowhere near where it once was.

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It wouldn't be so bad if that's where the Arc Raiders player base had leveled off, but that's not the case. It looks like the decline shows no signs of slowing down, and there isn't really a problem that developer Embark Studios can fix to stop the bleeding.

Arc Raiders has been plagued by cheaters for the past few months, leading to some high-profile streamers to stop playing the game and stop playing altogether, while the developers constantly focusing on the PvE rather than the PvP side of things is alienating a large portion of the game's audience. In fact, there are as many PvP enjoyers as there are PvE enjoyers.

It will be interesting to monitor, and if Arc Raiders never quite recovers and continues its steady slide, it will be a huge warning to any developer currently maintaining a live service game. If something as big as Arc Raiders can suffer possibly fatal damage in just a few months, then literally any game can. Hopefully Embrak has what it takes to turn the ship around.