Over a quarter-million players were above ground scavenging for loot or hanging out in Speranza at the same time together in Arc Raiders yesterday. That eye-popping number set a new Steam record for concurrent players in the extraction-shooter genre–with PvP features.
Spotted by Eurogamer, Arc Raiders peaked with 264,673 players on Valve’s platform for the game’s launch on October 30, per SteamDB. The strong start led to some server problems for the extraction shooter, though also proves Embark Studios might be right in not shying away from Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.
However, there are a couple of caveats to consider. For starters, Arc Raiders broke the Steam record when including PvP extraction shooters, but it’s arguably not a requirement to fit in the genre. Without PvP, Helldivers 2 holds the top spot for the genre, according to SteamDB, and even saw a huge resurgence in player counts when the game came to Xbox Series X|S in August. Meanwhile, Escape From Duckov has peaked on Steam with a little over 300,000 concurrent players and outgunned Battlefield 6 briefly last week.