ARC Raiders Developers Find Themselves in an Eternal Arms Race, as Players Break the Game (Literally)

ARCRaiders developers at Embark Studios are entering the fascinating phase where the player base becomes the ultimate, chaotic QA department. The team is finding out firsthand that millions of gamers will inevitably find exploits that the internal team never anticipated. Given that this scenario wasn’t anticipated during development, can players really be at fault for being exceptionally determined to find free loot?

How Players Are Rewriting ARC Raiders’ Rules

According to art director Robert Sammelin, the ARC Raiders development team has been genuinely surprised by many players’ behaviors. Sammelin noted that he was delighted by the creative ways players utilized the game’s physics in unexpected ways, revealing emergent gameplay the developers never intended. One of these exploits includes accessing high-tier loot rooms by simply sprinting into a corner repeatedly.

However, other actions require immediate attention to waterproof the experience and maintain balance. Although the studio has entered a continuous cycle of patching these exploits, players would discover another creative workaround. For developers, it’s currently unknown if this is a frustrating arms race or a fascinating form of collaborative game design.

For instance, after Embark patched common wall-breaching glitches, they filled illegally accessed rooms with flamethrowers as a deterrent. Subsequently, players showed their persistence by simply finding new out-of-bounds routes. Due to this dynamic, the development team’s ability to create a sealed environment in a complex, physics-based extraction shooter became a significant challenge.

When Your QA Team is Millions Strong

At one point, the developers envisioned having pattern-based boss fights akin to “Dark Souls” in the game. However, they scrapped the idea because its core systems made enemies too unpredictable. Who knows if this inherent unpredictability extends to ARC Raiders players as well? If so, however, they may become the game’s true final boss? Ultimately, the shooter is being shaped in real time thanks to this ongoing dialogue between developers and players.

So can the team perfectly balance their original vision with the community’s inventive, and sometimes exploitative, interactions with their world? It’s unclear how ARC Raiders developers will handle this unpredictable and inventive player base moving forward. The studio’s challenge is to embrace emergent gameplay while safeguarding the game’s core balance and integrity. For the game to be successful, they not only embrace its emergent gameplay but must also maintain its balance and integrity.