Embark Studios, the developer behind the extraction shooter Arc Raiders, significantly underestimated the challenges inherent in creating a live service game. Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal stated in a recent interview that the team's ambition for monthly post-release updates was ultimately untenable, resulting in a period of exhaustion and dissatisfaction due to consistently exceeding their capacity.
Grøndal shared these reflections with Game Developer, detailing the difficulties the studio faced in the months following Arc Raiders' launch. The game, which was described by Rock Paper Shotgun as a "deliciously tense extraction shooter that's surprisingly social and feels different every round," became a notable earner for publisher Nexon. However, this success came at a cost to the development team.
"Transitioning to live service is going to be fucking hard. Everyone said that to me," Grøndal recalled. "I've even said that to other people. I was mentally prepared for it to be hard—but I wasn't completely prepared for how hard it was."
He explained that the traditional development model of building, testing, and fixing contrasts sharply with the demands of a live service. "The demands of the players are really high, we feel like we really can't go much faster." The team, Grøndal confessed, was "super tired" and felt that the content being released, while produced as quickly as possible, was not meeting player expectations or their own internal standards.
Following an intense few months, Embark made the decision to revise its live service strategy. "We didn't have the time," Grøndal said, referencing the significant effort required for ongoing maintenance, bug fixes, and addressing exploits. "We were constantly overshooting our capacity and so it was hard to plan when there's so much to do."
In May, Arc Raiders moved away from monthly updates in favor of larger, biannual content drops. Grøndal indicated that this shift aims to recapture the more sustainable development experience the team had before the game's launch. "Ultimately, we asked 'why are we doing this?'" he stated. "Everything pointed towards the fact that we were doing it better before shipping, so we need to play to our strengths." This revised approach, he believes, will lead to better, more interesting, and higher-quality output while allowing for more iterative development.
Grøndal, who previously spent 15 years at Electronic Arts working on titles like Battlefield and Star Wars: Battlefront, acknowledged his own history with burnout. He recounted an experience of being "completely broken" and needing a five-month sick leave after overworking to ship a Battlefield game, emphasizing the severe personal toll and the risk of losing valuable team members.
Looking ahead, Arc Raiders is also testing a PvE mode, a response to player preferences that do not involve direct player-versus-player combat. The studio is focused on creating a more sustainable development environment for its team while continuing to evolve the game.