ARC Raiders has seen its Steam player count more than quadruple after the release of Frozen Trail, a massive new update that adds a grappling hook, letting players swing around like Spider-Man. The latest ARC Raiders update appears to have given Embark Studios' extraction shooter a major second wind nearly a year after launch.

PvPvE shooter ARC Raiders arrived in October 2025 and quickly became one of the year's biggest multiplayer releases, eventually reaching a Steam all-time peak of 481,966 concurrent players in January per SteamDB. That enormous audience gradually settled down as the months passed, with September peaking at just 39,900 players and averaging roughly 21,000 at any given time. Those numbers are hardly enough to call the game dead, but they show how far ARC Raiders has fallen from its launch-day phenomenon to a more long-term player base. Frozen Trail has now given many of those lapsed players a reason to head Topside again.

In a surprising announcement, ARC Raiders is collaborating with a restaurant chain to offer players special in-game rewards and cosmetics.

6 times September's high and its strongest showing since March. There is an important caveat, however, as Embark is also letting players access the full game for free across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S through October 12, so the update and the free weekend have clearly worked in tandem to create such a sudden jump in players. Still, getting more than 185,000 people online again shows that plenty of former and prospective Raiders were waiting for a good reason to jump back in.

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