Most people who have spent a significant amount of time playing ARC Raiders should know by now that it's a game that's as much about listening as it is about seeing. It is actually worth mentioning that if someone wants to succeed ARC Raidersthey should probably play it with a gaming headset on that allows them to hear more clearly. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has played a competitive shooter before, but i ARC Raidersplayers have more than just other Raiders to worry about. ARCs relentlessly patrol the surface in search of humans to subdue, and hearing them can be the difference between life and death. More than any PvP shooter, it makes the ability to hear everything of the utmost importance.
This ultimately depends on how ARC Raiders was designed – with sound in the forefront. According to the developers, ARC Raiders is “a game about listening for things,” which not every shooter can claim. Embark's extraction shooter already has impeccable graphics, but its sound design is top-notch and offers players an immersive experience unlike many others. But despite this being a central part of ARC Raiders' design philosophy, it wasn't nominated for the Game Award that some players expected to be an easy win.
ARC Raiders wasn't always about listening for things
As is the case with almost all games, ARC Raiders evolved drastically throughout its development. What the game is today is a far cry from what it was originally intended to be. For example, Embark initially planned the extraction shooter to be a PvE experience, as detailed in the first episode of The Evolution of ARC Raiders docu-series posted on the official ARC Raiders YouTube channel. That's not the only thing the developer changed though, as its pacing also changed significantly, with its emphasis on sound design filling a more prominent role as a result.
ARC Raider's emphasis on sound was due to a change of pace
It wasn't actually the developers who decided they wanted to ARC Raiders' Sound should be a central part of the experience that made it so, but a decision to slow down the pace of the game to the point where players would have no choice but to listen closely to their surroundings rather than react to them. As audio director Bence Pajor stated during the first episode of The Evolution of ARC Raiders, “The game we're making now was the game I kind of envisioned when we started building it. It was a game about exploring and being in this world, and the world was supposed to challenge you, and you were supposed to go places to find things. The way the game was played before was this action game.”
Of course, “things” still come at players ARC Raiders in its current version, with the machines of the world going out of their way to track down and defeat any player they see out in the open. However, there's no denying the fact that the extraction shooter fans play today forces them to a slower pace than an “action game,” as Pajor calls it, might have done. Originally pitched as something closer Shadow of the Colossus meets Left 4 Dead meets PUBG, ARC Raiders' game loop was once vague and heavy on action. Over time, the tempo dropped, the environments grew larger and the decision was made to highlight sound as the core of the experience. As Pajor said,
“For me, it's much better because it has a slower pace. This is the best game I've worked on, for me, because it's a game about listening for things.”
As the sound director said, ARC Raiders was meant to challenge players not only visually but also audibly, forcing them to listen in order to survive. Today, the extraction game is not about quick snaps and quick trades but about strategic planning, careful decision-making and an extreme amount of environmental awareness, all of which are deeply rooted in its sound design. And yet, ARC Raiders was excluded from the list of games nominated for Best Sound Design at this year's Game Awards.
ARC Raiders may not win Best Sound Design at the 2025 Game Awards
Although there have been many heated discussions about whether ARC Raiders should have been nominated for Game of the Year, a less controversial view seems to be that it should have at least been nominated for Best Sound Design. It was nominated for Best Multiplayer Game, along with the likes of Battlefield 6 and Fire Ring Nightreignbut it was denied the award that would have highlighted one of its most prioritized and celebrated features.
Here are the nominees for Best Sound Design in the 2025 Game Awards:
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Battlefield 6 (Battlefield Studios/EA)
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Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive/Kepler Interactive)
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Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (Kojima Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
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Ghost of Yotei (Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Interactive Entertainment)
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Silent Hill f (NeoBards Entertainment/KONAMI)
ARC Raiders' Sound design is good because it was treated so well during development. Embark's goal during the game's development seemed to be not just to polish sound effects at the end of everything, but to build the entire game around them. Every ARC Wasp overhead, every explosion from a Rocketeer's missiles in the distance, and even the wind blowing through the trees is there to tell players everything they need to know about what's going on around them. ARC Raiders the entire gameplay loop is based on how effective its audio crafting context is, so it must be good.
That's why its absence from the Best Sound Design nominations feels so odd, as few games lean as much on their audio or rely on it as directly as ARC Raiders do. Since the game's launch, the consensus among players has even been that the extraction shooter has impeccable sound design, with Reddit posts like this one from user KawiWarrior urging players to show respect. Other Reddit posts, such as one from user ThrowghAway74, express a similar sentiment, with comments from fans calling ARC Raiders' Sound design “amazing”, “too good” and “out of this world.”
ARC Raiders earned its reputation as a game built around listening, not because of a marketing line, but because its entire identity grew out of a shift towards a slower pace and a world that forces players to pay attention to every sound it makes. That evolution turned audio into the backbone of the experience, affecting how players move, how they plan, and how they survive. With that in mind, its absence from the Best Sound Design category stands out, as few games this year built their core loop around sound as consciously as ARC Raiders. Although the awards overlooked it, the reality is that players know what the game achieved, and the community has recognized its audio work since launch.
- Released
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30 October 2025
- ESRB
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Teen/violence, blood
