The charm of ARC Raiders, a new extraction shooter game from Embark Studios, has rapidly fallen into ruins due to server instability, rendering many of hundreds of thousands of players out of the game experience. Rumors have been flying around, especially since around 10 am PST today, that the server architecture was severely stressed a few minutes after its official launch.
However, above the rest, players are experiencing long loading queues, being kicked out of matches, or failing to ever load the game client. However, according to the developers’ updates, the server infrastructure is facing numerous cascading failures, which crop up on a nonfunctional voice chat as well as major problems in the critical party system. Those players making it past the loading screen have also reported being mismatched or wrongly paired with other players, even when trying to enter a queue for a solo match while deliberately configuring crossplay to be disabled.
In an ironic twist, the collapse in technology is attributed to the extraordinary performance of the title during its launch. ARC Raiders has quickly gained a staggering audience, much to the tune of more than 300,000 concurrent users on Steam alone. Such pressuring numbers take the game to an elite level. It currently places fourth in terms of concurrent players on the massive platform. Given the fact that the game is a commercial release working among dominance- free-to-play contemporaries, it is indeed something of a noteworthy feat considering pre-launch “server slam” for the very setting strongly suggests initial demand from players beyond what the server capacity was prepared for.
Embark Studios has made admission into this case, with the game’s Community Manager coming directly into the concerns of the worried users through the official Discord channel. The team confirmed they are actively working to isolate the root cause and implement a comprehensive solution. However, by this evening, the studio had yet to comment on when normal service would resume or whether it would reimburse players for significant downtime. Immediate priority for the development team remains the swift, robust resolution of these critical connectivity issues.
