As Arc Raiders devs work on "reactivating" the 16 million people who bought the shooter, Embark Studios is early in development on two new games

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Friendship-making-slash-ruining sim Arc Raiders is a big deal, that much we knew, but the extraction shooter has now surpassed 16 million copies sold. So Embark Studios is focusing on "reactivating" those raiders like robot-hunting sleeper agents, while the rest of the team makes two new mysterious games.

Publisher Nexon announced the sales milestone in its latest earnings report. The hit shooter might have come out and gone massively viral last year, but it's got legs fit for a marathon since Arc Raiders sold another 4.6 million units during the first three months of the year. More recently, its lifetime total reached 16 million copies.

"Extraordinary worldwide sales have made Arc Raiders the most successful new product release in company history, and demonstrated that Nexon can deliver games at scale across global markets," the publisher brags. "Six months after the launch, and driven by a steady stream of content updates, Arc Raiders surpassed 16 million unit sales worldwide and consistently ranked among the top games on Steam’s most-played chart. More than half of the active players have already spent over 100 hours in the game, totaling more than 1.5 billion hours - an exceptionally high level of engagement."

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Nexon also notes how Embark Studios is working to keep the momentum going with the Frozen Trail update, coming in October. While that might seem too far out to feed the millions of players sustaining a live service game, Embark stressed the update would address long-term concerns and make more "transformative" changes.

The publisher itself reckons everything coming with The Frozen Trail - from new cosmetics to the largest map yet - will be "great for reactivating users who finished the original game, and for attracting all-new players." I wonder what the activation code is.

Then, buried way at the bottom of the financial report in a list of upcoming Nexon games, we get a small glimpse into the developer's future. "From Embark Studios: Two new games in the early stage of development." That's the only crumb of information we have about the two projects, but after how explosively successful Arc Raiders became, anything the dev touches should be worth keeping an eye on.

Arc Raiders will soon let you keep blueprints and buy more stash space because "very few of you are going on the Expedition"

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Kaan SerinFreelance contributor

Kaan freelances for various websites including Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer, and this one, Gamesradar. He particularly enjoys writing about spooky indies, throwback RPGs, and anything that's vaguely silly. Also has an English Literature and Film Studies degree that he'll soon forget.

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