ARC Raiders
Embark
Players recently fought and stealthed their way from the ARC Raiders Closed Alpha, and almost everyone had a similar thought:
This game seems ready for release.
That’s not usually the case with an Alpha, and while there were certainly balance issues, it felt like a complete game perhaps minus a few things that were being held in the test. But it didn’t even look like it needed say, visual polish.
There may be a reason for that, and some players believe they’ve found the actual release date for ARC Raiders, which may be imminent.
A post-Alpha update was added to the game and for ten minutes, players dug around to find that through the .exe file it led to a “tick counter” link which ended on June 6. In what seems like an unlikely coincidence, Geoff Keighley’s Summer Game Fest show begins on, you guessed it, June 6.
You will also never guess when Embark’s last game, The Finals, debuted. That was at The Game Awards 2023, where it was instantly playable when it was shown off. A “shadow drop.”
The one difference was that there was an actual open beta for The Finals a month before The Game Awards, where there has not been anything like that here. But:
1) The game feeling ready to release
2) This dug-up date being the day Summer Games Fest starts
3) Embark shadow-dropping The Finals at a different Keighley event
I mean, that all points to the idea that this June 6 date, just under two weeks from now, may in fact pan out.
Arc Raiders
Embark
ARC Raiders was viewed as a solid new entry in the extraction shooter genre during its last Closed Alpha, with its playercount increasing each day during the test. It also had the benefit of running the test at the same time as rival extraction shooter Marathon, the upcoming Bungie game and most players would say it compared very favorably. Marathon was more unfinished in what felt like a true Alpha test ahead of an alleged September 23 release date. Bungie just stumbled into a controversy when it was revealed that stolen art assets have been used in the game.
ARC Raiders has had no such controversy and it would simply not be surprising if it dropped at Summer Games Fest. One issue with shadow drops, however, is that everyone is suddenly rushing to play all at once, creating server or login issues, which is exactly what happened with The Finals. But hopefully they’re preparing for that.
Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, Bluesky and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
