Arc Raiders' executive producer, Aleksander Grøndal, has spoken candidly about the immense difficulty of developing and maintaining a live service game, admitting that the team at Embark Studios was not fully prepared for the demands involved. "Transitioning to live service is going to be fucking hard," Grøndal stated in an interview with Game Developer. "Everyone said that to me. 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."
The rapid success of Arc Raiders, which saw significant player numbers shortly after launch, put unexpected pressure on the development team. Grøndal explained that the traditional development cycle of building, testing, and fixing no longer aligned with the high expectations of live service players. "When you build a game up until launch, you build and you test and you build and you test and you fix things and measure results. So the way that we've been building video games was based on that idea—but now the demands of the players are really high, we feel like we really can't go much faster."
This pace led to the development team consistently overextending their capacity. "We were constantly overshooting our capacity and so it was hard to plan when there's so much to do," Grøndal noted. The need to implement bug fixes, address exploits, and perform general maintenance consumed a significant portion of the team's time, hindering their ability to produce new, engaging content at a rate that satisfied players. This resulted in player retention issues and player complaints about the consistency and interest level of new updates.
The strain also impacted the well-being of the development staff. "The team were super unhappy," Grøndal admitted. "To be fair, they were running really hard milestones and that wasn't fun and challenging, so we had to do something." He further emphasized the personal cost of burnout, sharing his own experience after shipping a Battlefield game, which led to a five-month sick leave. "Being burned out feels super shitty to be honest. It's terrible. I don't recommend it to anyone. Also, it means we lose good people who might be out [of work] for a very long time."
Embark Studios ultimately decided to reassess their approach, recognizing that their strengths lay in a more deliberate development process. "Everything pointed towards the fact that we were doing it better before shipping, so we need to play to our strengths," Grøndal explained. This shift allows for more iteration and higher-quality output, rather than a relentless focus on shipping content. The studio is now prioritizing a framework that supports both creativity and a sustainable work-life balance for its employees, acknowledging that happy and well-rested developers produce better results in the long run. The recent 'Frozen Trail' update is cited as an early example of the positive outcomes of this adjusted strategy, bringing new content and features to the game.