"Ultimately, we asked 'why are we doing this?'": the creators of Arc Raiders wildly underestimated how hard it is to make a live service game

Embark's developers behind the extraction shooter Arc Raiders have admitted they underestimated the difficulty of creating a live service game. In an interview at Gamescom, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal called transitioning to a live service model "going to be fucking hard" and noted he wasn't fully prepared for the intensity of the task.

The game launched last year with plans for monthly post-release updates, but the team soon found they were constantly overshooting their capacity as demands for new content grew. The first few months after launch were described as "murderous," with team members feeling exhausted and the game struggling to maintain its quality. In response, Embark decided to shift focus from monthly updates to larger, biannual additions.

Grøndal, a veteran of Electronic Arts with experience on Battlefield and Star Wars: Battlefront, reflected on his own history of overworking and the toll it took on his well-being. He admitted he should have anticipated the potential for burnout in a live service project of this scale. The future of Arc Raiders now includes the development of a PvE mode, as the team aims to provide a more manageable workload and higher-quality content for players.