Embark Studios’ extraction shooter Arc Raiders hits PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S on October 30, and in the lead-up to its launch, the studio dropped a “server slam” from October 17-19 that blew up on Steam. In light of this success, design director Virgil Watkins said the playtest was illuminating because of Bungie’s Marathon.
Speaking to PC Gamer, Watkins explained that the two games–Arc Raiders and Marathon–gave Embark Studios a chance to see player reception toward the studio’s divergent designs within the same genre.
“It was very coincidental that they had their test around the time we did. To my knowledge, I don’t think any of us knew that was going to happen,” he said. “It was a very great A/B test for us, because obviously they made decisions that we didn’t, and vice versa. So we could kind of compare and contrast how some of those things shook out.”