ARC Raiders is, without a doubt, the #1 trending live service game at the start of 2026. As revealed by SteamDB, it was the best-selling premium product on Steam during the Holiday week (December 23 to 30), beating even Valve’s own Steam Deck and EA’s Battlefield 6. It is also estimated that ARC Raiders is currently doing a better job of keeping its players engaged than Battlefield 6, as evidenced by the fact that the game developed by Embark Studios peaked at 428K concurrent users on Steam within the last 24 hours. In contrast, Battlefield 6 reached just 128K simultaneous players yesterday, despite technically having sold more units in total.
It’s been an explosive launch, that’s for sure. Publisher Nexon previously stated that the game became its biggest launch ever, with over four million units sold in its first twelve days on the market. By now, it’s likely not far off ten million units across all platforms, and it was even the most searched videogame on Google in 2025. The game also earned prestigious prizes, being crowned the Best Multiplayer Game launched last year at The Game Awards 2025.
But it’s not been all roses for Embark Studios and Nexon. There was also controversy surrounding the game’s use of AI-based text-to-speech technology, sparked by Eurogamer’s review of ARC Raiders, which rated it 2 out of 5 stars specifically because of this. As you may recall, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney rallied to the studio’s defense, stating that political opinions should be expressed in op-ed articles rather than reviews. Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney later chimed in that it was fair to assume every game company is already using AI, and while some developers denied that, there are plenty who agree. Level 5-CEO Akihiro Hino recently advocated for the usage of AI in game development.
‘We could not have built the games that we’ve built or service the games that we’ve done… without some help from artificial intelligence.’
Now, in an interview with GamesBeat, Embark founder (and former CEO of DICE) Patrick Söderlund returned to the thorny matter, urging people to reevaluate their stance on AI usage in games, as it can be a considerable boon for developers and also a ‘tremendous benefit’ for players. For the record, Embark had already used the same technology in their previous game, the free-to-play competitive shooter The Finals.
I think people have misconceptions about what it means. We don’t use artificial intelligence to not have to hire people, or replace people, or replace job groups. That’s not the point. We have several voice actors that we work with that are on contract. We work with them continuously. We will continue working with them. They’re of course a central piece of this puzzle, but artificial intelligence, you know, we will pay for their voices and sometimes using an artificial voice gets us to update the game a lot faster to make things. If you want a change to the game, we can submit it quickly.
I think people need to take a step back and look at this and understand what it is and what it can do and the fact that it could be a tremendous help to developers and hence a tremendous benefit to players. Obviously, used in the wrong way… I realize that it’s an intricate subject and discussion, but at the same time, we feel that for us, it’s never been about replacing people. It’s been about making tedious, sometimes boring work parts disappear or be much faster. It’s about putting people’s time where it really makes sense. I really hope that that’s not something that rubs people the wrong way. Shouldn’t be.
[…] AI will have an impact on so many different types of areas of our society today, but I think we need to learn to maneuver that situation and maneuver what it means. I think it doesn’t need to be something that’s all bad at all. Now, for us, we could not have built the games that we’ve built or service the games that we’ve done. The Finals, for example, has been updated every single week once a week since the day we launched it. There’s been substantial improvements and updates to the game. By the way, the game is free, so you can go in and not spend a single dollar in the game and we couldn’t have done that without some help from artificial intelligence, but obviously most importantly through smart investment in tools and pipelines, technology, and incredible people. This is a people industry. I don’t envision games being done automatically by some artificial intelligence.
Embark Studios is currently believed to employ around 350 developers. It certainly qualifies as a triple-A team, although it’s not nearly as big as the teams behind Call of Duty or Battlefield, to name a couple of competitors.
Do you agree with Söderlund’s assessment? Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments.
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