Arc Raiders Tests a PvE Toggle That Thins PvP

Embark will run a PvE matchmaking toggle in Arc Raiders from October 13 to 20, 2026, after a studio survey found 51% of players wanted a dedicated PvE option. Executive producer Aleks set the terms in a September 24 blog post.

Friendly raiders will leave the mixed pool during that window. Embark already says the shift can change the quality of remaining PvPvE sessions.

The Friendly Cohort Grew While PvP Stayed Flat

Aleks split the live base by how people most like to play, not by a single round. The friendly co-op group is the one that has grown since launch. Pure PvP has stayed level. Mixed players sit in the middle, still willing to shoot or wave depending on the raid.

HOW EMBARK SPLITS THE LIVE BASE

Those three shares add to 98%, so a sliver of the base sits outside the buckets. The friction Embark named is specific: friendly raiders often try to avoid PvP entirely, and other groups complain about ratting and camping. Over 70% of the friendly group, and 40% of the PvP group, asked for fewer hostile encounters.

The studio’s line is that a large, growing set of raiders come to the Rust Belt for co-op and the ARC machines, not for other players. Aleks wrote that the group has become a core part of the community, and that Embark would rather learn how to support them than leave them working around the game.

What the PvE Toggle Changes in a Raid

The test is an opt-in matchmaking pool on the same maps, not a new raid, a new quest line, or a harder PvE track. Other raiders still share the session. They simply cannot hurt you, and you cannot hurt them. Solos, duos, and trios land in the same PvE room, which is the reverse of how Embark now tracks playstyle in classic PvPvE.

RULES FOR THE OCTOBER PVE TEST

• The window: Matchmaking runs from October 13 to 20, 2026, then the toggle comes out and queues return to normal.
• The guns: PvE sessions have zero player-to-player damage and are built around the ARC threat and co-op social play.
• The loot: Overall loot value is lowered in PvE to offset the extra safety, while PvPvE gets slightly higher baseline loot during the test.
• The downed rule: ARC machines can re-acquire you if you crawl after they down you, and they ignore you if you stay still.
• The exclusions: Night Raids, Hidden Bunker, Locked Gate, and Frigate stay out of the PvE pool because they rely on player uncertainty.
• The rating: Time in PvE does not move your PvPvE matchmaking rating, and the studio wants switching between the two to feel seamless.

Aleks was blunt about intent. The test is not a trial of tougher machines or a separate PvE progression path. It is an alternative to player fights, with a loot cut and a nastier downed state standing in for the missing human threat.

The official account posted the same window and asked people to run it and talk back.

From October 13 to October 20, ARC Raiders will be beta-testing a PvE matchmaking toggle. Come try it out, and let us know what you think! Your feedback will help us determine if it works, and what the future of this feature could look like.

Read more about the test in our blog… pic.twitter.com/LJihJDPXNq

— ARC Raiders (@ARCRaidersGame) September 24, 2026

May’s Notes Still Said Topside Always Carries Risk

Arc Raiders launched on Steam on October 30, 2025 as a PvPvE extraction game after Embark reset an older plan. The September 24 post says the first version, conceived seven years before the toggle, was a raid-based PvE co-op game with looting, and that the team walked away from it. The studio still points players to its own evolution film for that reset.

For most of 2026 the live game tried to keep both tribes in one Topside without a hard door. Playstyle matchmaking pushed similar raiders together on a scale, never as a guarantee. That system was the studio’s answer to people who wanted calm raids and people who wanted fights, without printing a PvE button.

THE MATCHMAKING PATH TO A PVE TOGGLE

1. May 20, 2026: Embark publishes matchmaking notes that say playstyle is a continuous scale, similarity is more likely than guaranteed, and there are no PvE-only lobbies where other raiders will never attack you.
2. July 7, 2026: Update 1.36.0 starts tracking solo, duo, and trio playstyle on separate records so a friendly solo run no longer drags a PvP trio rating, and the reverse.
3. July 28, 2026: Update 1.39.0 tests a further cut, so only fights you start move your playstyle estimate, and defending yourself, including knocking out the squad that shot first, does not count.
4. September 24, 2026: Aleks announces the PvE matchmaking toggle for October 13 to 20 and says the test is not a promise of a future PvE mode.
5. October 8, 2026: The Frozen Trail update lands, five days before the PvE window, with Pendola Pass and the Frigate built around other raiders as part of the threat.

The May notes are the document that makes the October test a reversal of a public rule, not a small UI tweak. Topside, the team wrote then, always carries risk. You could trend toward calmer raiders. You could still get shot.

Splitting the Queue Can Make PvPvE Meaner

Once the toggle is on, the friendly 37% have a door that does not depend on behaving well enough for the scale to notice. People who already treated playstyle matchmaking as a quiet way to farm calmer rooms get an honest lane. The leftover PvPvE pool skews toward the 34% who came to fight, plus mixed players who stay.

That can be a gift to PvP regulars who have been complaining about rats and campers who never take the fight. It can also leave those rooms thinner. Embark named both problems in the same breath: low-population regions and off hours may see a small rise in matchmaking times, and a large PvE turnout “may also might affect the quality of some of the PvPvE sessions,” which the team said it would watch and adjust.

The live Steam pool is already a long way from the January high. SteamCharts lists a 30-day Steam average of 20,827.3 concurrent players, with a period peak of 36,906. The same tracker puts the all-time peak at 465,097, reached in January 2026, when the monthly average sat at 241,196.7. A split that would have been invisible at that January load is a real queue question at a 20,827.3 average, especially in smaller regions after midnight.

The economy move is the other half of the filter. Friendly players, and by extension PvE sessions, extract more often and earn more value. During the test, PvPvE gets a slight loot bump to keep the dangerous door worth opening, and PvE pays for safety with worse hauls. Anyone who wants the full loot table still has to walk into rooms where other raiders can shoot.

There is a risk that introducing a PvE matchmaking toggle could reduce some of the tension that the game was built around. At the same time, we have to respect that some players want to enjoy the game in their own way, and we can’t ignore what the data is telling us.

Aleks, Executive Producer, Arc Raiders newsroom

PvP-first players already read that risk as a drain, and some of the replies under the announcement treated the toggle as a way to hollow out the game. The other camp is simpler: load the quiet raids, fight ARC, and leave the shooters to each other. Both can be true in the same week if the loot tax and the excluded conditions actually keep high-stakes players in PvPvE.

Frozen Trail’s Frigate Stays in the Hostile Pool

Frozen Trail arrives on October 8 with Pendola Pass, a fallen Emperor, and a vessel players have started calling the Frigate. Embark’s preview says ARC is sending one of its largest ships to patrol the new valley, and that raiders who board it will have to collaborate or cut through other people in close quarters hundreds of feet in the air. The Frigate is on the exclusion list for the PvE test that starts five days later.

Night Raids, Hidden Bunker, and Locked Gate sit on that list for the same reason. They are the conditions designed around not knowing who else is in the raid. If those rooms had gone into the PvE pool, the test would have been a full second game. They did not. The quiet toggle is for scavenging, quests, and ARC, in relative safety. The new map’s prize vehicle stays a place where another squad is part of the design.

That split is how Embark tries to keep the original extraction bet intact while it measures the 51% who asked for a dedicated PvE option. The machines still fill the PvE maps. The human question mark moves to the content the studio is least willing to sand down.

Tarkov’s PvE Mode Reached Half the Players

Escape from Tarkov already ran a version of this split. Game director Nikita Buyanov said PvE starts a wipe at 15-20% of players, with about 80% in PvP, and that the mix becomes roughly 50/50 by the end of a wipe. He framed PvE as a calmer place to learn maps and guns before the “real fun” of getting shot at. Battlestate still sells Tarkov as a PvP game. The PvE lane still took a huge share of the people who logged in late in a wipe.

Arc Raiders is not copying that product. Tarkov’s PvE is a paid, persistent off-ramp with no other humans in the raid. Embark’s test keeps other raiders in the session, kills player damage, mixes squad sizes, and expires on October 20. The caution is the share, not the rules. If a large slice of a 20,827.3 Steam average parks in PvE for eight days, the studio will learn whether leftover PvPvE got sharper, slower, or both.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The dates: The toggle is scheduled for October 13 to 20, 2026, then it is removed.
• The combat rule: Player damage is off in PvE; ARC still fights, and crawling while downed can draw them again.
• The economy rule: PvE loot is lowered; PvPvE loot is slightly higher for the test only.
• The content rule: Night Raids, Hidden Bunker, Locked Gate, and Frigate stay in the PvP-facing pool.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Daily start times: Embark has not posted the hour the toggle turns on or off in each region.
• A permanent mode: Aleks wrote that the test is not a promise of a future PvE mode, and that any later version could look different.
• Queue damage: The studio will watch off-hour wait times and PvPvE session quality, with no result published yet.

When the window closes, matchmaking goes back to the scale that still allows a stranger to break a quiet raid. Aleks said the team will share findings after the test, and that feedback will decide whether the door stays shut, opens again, or comes back as something else. The Frigate, five days into Frozen Trail, will still ask whether the next silhouette is a teammate or a problem.