Arc Raiders is finally trying out a PvE-only mode, and it's gone exactly as you'd expect. After the limited-time release of a PvE toggle, fierce opinions have hit the game's community faster than Bastion bullets to my temple after I misclick my photoelectric cloak, and the test has only just begun. Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal tells me that, inside developer Embark Studios, similar debates about a PvE mode raged, but the team decided the "dad gamers" deserve a fair shot.

At the risk of splitting the game in two, Embark chose to finally bite the bullet after realizing that players had practically done the legwork for them.

"We kind of got to the point where it's like, these friendly servers, they are almost playing out like they don't have PvP in them at all, and people seem to be enjoying that," Grøndal observes. "We could see that group of people was consistently growing a little bit over the history of the game."

Grøndal tips his hat to "a group of, let's call them dad gamers for lack of a better word" who are the imagined casual gamer made manifest. They have "a couple of hours to play every now and then and just want to go out and complete some objectives. Every time they feel like they get defeated by someone extraction camping or someone else with higher gear, it's just frustration for them. And they express this pretty vocally. ' OK, we hear you.

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