ARC Raiders - Why Embark Is TESTING A Free-To-Play Model

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]Our creators just went freetoplay, but it's not a panic move. Hours ago, a targeted region rollout went live. I'll talk about that entire pipeline and the catch. On that exact same night, Embark also completely swept the Nordic Game Awards, even winning game of the year over Battlefield 6. Today, we're breaking down the business data behind this rollout, the brand new live currency event structures on your servers, and what it means for the momentum of the expansion, as well as a whole bunch more. What's up, world?

[00:00:26]Utopia here, back with another video.

[00:00:28]Today we're checking out all things Arc Raiders. If you enjoy in-depth breakdowns like this, I'd really appreciate you hit the subscribe button, potentially turning on the bell icon so you get these right away when they do drop. And if you enjoyed today's video, I'd appreciate a like on it. But let's just get right into the data. The first one here, we have to understand exactly why they are doing a freeto-play move, which is a massive structural win for the game. It's not a crisis button.

[00:00:48]Trust me, we'll go over all the details here. We have to look at the precise fine print of this launch, which again do have a few catches with it. The first one is this is actually strictly localized to PC internet cafes with a free-to-play model. What's actually called PC Bang over in Korea. It's an hourly fee gaming center or internet cafe originating in South Korea. They have high-end hardware there, food, drink, etc. And 24-hour access, but essentially it is localized to that region. So, as of right now, for most the global audience, it actually does remain a premium paid title. If you're playing from home, this also applies to Korea as well, of course. Whether you're playing on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, or even Epic Games, but there is a very specific region strategy with this. PC Bank's ecosystem dictates long-term success in the Asian markets. This is Nexon utilizing that exact operational playbook that turned PUBG and League of Legends into a multi-billion dollar permanent staples. If you know anything about those two games, their player numbers are absolutely insane. There's even a few other details that coincide with this.

[00:01:53]First off though, Nexon is a Korean-based company. That's why this is happening there. But Nexon is their parent company and essentially why this is happening in South Korea that actually does have way more internet cafes anyways. I don't know about you guys, but there isn't many by me and there really doesn't seem to be that many internet cafes in the NA region anyways or even globally for that matter. But overall, there is a playbook strategy to this where Nexon is aggressively funding this rollout today with the Coco's special internet cafe supply event. Players logging in from these cafes receive a permanent 10% bonus to XP and Coco materials. Now, might be asking what exactly are Coco materials. That translates to scrappy materials in global wording, but essentially Coco is the Korean localized name for Scrappy. But essentially there, this exclusive event is running through PC Bang from May 21st to June 30th with premium benefits including freetoplay through Nexon account, a 10% XP bonus, and 10% bonus scrappier cocoa materials.

[00:02:48]Players also get daily attendance rewards including bandages, shield charges, raider hatch keys, loot mark 1's, Rattler fours, and higher tier firearm parts. So, they have a daily check-in reward, playtime rewards, and even a hardware raffle. For every hour they do play in a PC bang, they earn one raider ticket capped at three per weekday, five on weekdays. Those tickets can then be used for lucky draws, including MSI and Steel series sponsored prizes. But overall, the read is not Arc Raiders is struggling and going free.

[00:03:18]This reads that Nexon is localizing the business model for Korea using PC Bang Access as the discovery tunnel and stacking real incentives to get players into populated sessions during the launch window. Again, overall this is a really really good method for them. As I mentioned, PUBG and League of Legends also played into this and we know just how popular those games are. Again, they're really trying to push into the Asian market as previously in one of their quarterly earnings.

[00:03:43]They're even bringing the game to the China client or a CN version of this client. This has already happened for the finals. It actually has a separate client for CN. They're doing this exact same thing with Arc Raiders. So, this is their Asia push to that region. And honestly, the more players, the marrier here as this will really start to pump up the numbers and increase that regional pipeline. For those of you in the comments though, how do you feel about Embark and Nexon utilizing the PC bank model for regional player growth?

[00:04:09]Do you think these premium shooters in the West should look at similar localized free play initiatives that could potentially help with keeping regional matchmaking pools overflowing?

[00:04:18]Drop your thoughts below so we can compare those metrics and even go over them in future videos. Meanwhile, though, Nexon is handling the regional population pipeline in Asia. Embark Studios just spent tonight getting massive validation at the highest professional level in Europe. Tonight, Arc Raiders just got game of the year sweep getting here Nordic game of the year in Malmo, which happened in Sweden.

[00:04:38]It actually had some heavyweight competition here with Battlefield 6, Funcom's Dune Awakening, Hazelite Split Fiction, and even My Winter Car.

[00:04:45]Battlefield 6 actually went home completely empty-handed despite multiple nominations. And it didn't just win the top slot here. It actually won three of the night's major categories: game of the year, best technology, and best audio, which I did feel that Arc Raiders got a bit snubbed on the audio section for the game awards. Whether that was due to the whole voice controversy thing, I'm just not sure how Battlefield 6 won that category. I know some players did enjoy the gunplay and the sounds of that. Regardless, I think Arc Raiders has much better sound in my opinion, but they did win it at the Nordic Game Award. Of course, this does apply to the overall data metrics. It's not that this game just won game of the year for no reason. It had 16 million cumulative units sold globally in its first 15 weeks, a 960,000 peak concurrent reach globally, 93% critic rating on Open Critic, and a very positive status on Steam with nearly 390,000 reviews. So, they didn't just win this award for nothing. Basically, they definitely have the stats to back this one up why they did deserve that. I think especially so best technology as they have been using machine learning appropriately and I honestly do think Embark utilizes this technology for the good and they're probably one of the only studios properly using it. We know just how good the arc creators AI is and there's a reason for that. But none of this macrolevel commercial success matters if the game feels empty between major expansions. And to bring us a new microevent strategy Embark finalized over the last 48 hours to bridge that gap. They are now doing a three-w weekek update architecture. Embark did lay out in the recent 1.3 patch notes that they are doing a different blueprint here for the game's mid-season health. Live technical updates will now drop every 3 weeks. While store selections, trial rotations, and even a few hot fixes mixed in there are going to remain strictly on a weekly cadence. They are pretty good with the weekly updates. The finals has never failed that from what I'm aware from when they maybe went on Christmas vacation, but that's every studio. No one's working through that realistically. Again, they still said they would do hot fixes when needed. So, if there's any bugs or anything major they have to fix in between these updates, they usually are pretty good on that, at least given the final track record. Another thing I wanted to cover here is the Seaside Snaps. Basically, as some sort of proof for this blueprint in action. If you haven't seen, they actually do run a lot of these competitions over on the Discord side of things. This one was seaside snaps or a photography contest. Essentially, the 10 best photos will win, 1100 Raider tokens. Now, this one did end recently.

[00:07:12]In fact, we had a community manager confirm this specifically from CM Lily here who said we closed a submission to Seaside Snaps and they're going to be announcing the winners next week. So, we should see those going into June. Check out the Discord though if you do want to win those competitions. Since we're on that one, there actually is another competition that they do consistently, which is actually the top 10 Arc Raiders community highlights. You might have seen these on their YouTube channel.

[00:07:33]They do post these quite frequently. You can actually submit your highlights to this highlight reel and get featured in these videos. Now, that's not all.

[00:07:41]There's actually one of the rarest items in the game tied to this, and that's the film reel backpack charm. You can only get this backpack charm if you make it into the top 10 Arc Raider submissions.

[00:07:52]So, if you want something exclusive there and to make it into these highlight reels, then check out the highlight reel submission, check out the Discord, etc. With that though, when you look past the basic patch notes and piece everything together from Malmo to Seoul, it becomes incredibly obvious where this game is headed. They are working on a regional infrastructure expansion in Asia, of course, with both the PC bang cafes and also an alternate CN client. That one still hasn't come out yet. I will have more details on that eventually. Them also winning a ton of rewards in Europe and the microlevel loop optimization via weekly cycles. The studio is clearly marching towards something massive here, which we already know is frozen trail. Let me know that which of these updates you're actually tracking closely. Stay safe topside. I'd appreciate subscribe if you haven't already.