Arc Raiders Player Count Rises With Frozen Trail Update, but Numbers May Be Deceptively High

Arc Raiders has clearly drawn back lapsed players with its latest update, Frozen Trail, which upgrades the game to version 2.0. Many players see it as a relaunch of the popular extraction shooter, and the numbers confirm it. Read more

If you click on a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commission. Read our editorial policy.

Arc Raiders has clearly been able to attract lagging players with its latest update, Frozen Trail, which brings the game up to version 2.0. Many players see it as a reboot of the popular mining shooter, and the numbers back it up.

On Steam, the number of Arc Raiders concurrent players skyrocketed after the update was released, peaking at 185,443 (via SteamDB). This is the highest number of concurrent players Arc Raiders has seen since March, and is significantly higher than the game's typical daily peaks of under 40,000.

In fact, looking more closely at the player numbers, you can see that daily syncs have been declining for almost the last few months, only briefly rebounding after the release of other major updates.

There's a caveat to those numbers, though: Arc Raiders launched a free trial alongside Frozen Trail, meaning some of these players are new and may never buy a copy of the game.

Frozen Trail is a massive update that touches almost every element of Arc Raiders. Primarily it adds the biggest new map in the game, Pendola Pass, and introduces a number of new Arc enemy units. Some other exciting additions include new weapons, a player home called The Outpost, and a complete overhaul of the skill tree.

The update notably also introduces a new weapon meta that is intended to cater to PvE and PvP players separately, giving life to many underused weapons and tools.

This focus on serving both of the game's audiences is perhaps why Embark finally saw fit to officially test a dedicated PvE mode. The test will run from October 13th to the 20th, but there's no telling if this will lead to the permanent addition of the PvE-only mode.

The free trial ends today, so it will be interesting to see if the PvE test is enough to bring players back and keep the stats up. However, a dedicated PvE mode has been a requested feature of Arc Raiders, so we could see another increase.