Arc Raiders' Frozen Trail update wasn't exactly a make-or-break moment for a game that's already a massive commercial success, but it was a big bet by developer Embark Studios, which committed to releasing larger updates after long periods of relative inactivity. Based on early numbers following Frozen Trail's launch, that gamble is paying off.

As we so often have to, we're working off of Steam numbers for a multiplatform game, so we can only approximate trends here. But SteamDB shows a pretty clear spike for Arc Raiders.

As of October 8, the game has seen a 24-hour Steam peak of 131,388 concurrent players, which is the type of excitement Arc Raiders hasn't seen since April. It hasn't been above 100,000 CCU since May, even, and it has spent several months in the 30,000 to 50,000 range as Embark focused on cutting through the noise with one big knife rather than the dozen small razors it rolled out post-launch.

Obviously, Frozen Trail isn't the only driving factor here. I spoke to executive producer Aleksander Grøndal about the concerted push around this launch, and he said the studio does see it almost as a relaunch in some ways. Nominally, it's a 2.0 moment for the game. To roll out the red carpet, Embark has also given players until October 12 to play the game for free, and it's currently on sale for 50% off to boot.

Sales and giveaways consistently push a lot of players toward games, so Frozen Trail has definitely had some help rocketing Arc Raiders up the Steam charts.

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