Arc Raiders Frozen Trail Tests Embark’s Twice-Yearly Update Bet

Arc Raiders hit 185,443 concurrent Steam players after Frozen Trail, its first giant patch under a twice-yearly plan. The free-play window closed on October 12. A 24-hour peak of 163,922 still showed up on the next SteamCharts sample, with the game remaining at half price.

That is the first public score of a wager Embark Studios placed in May, when it stopped promising monthly content and bet the extraction shooter on two large updates a year.

Two Updates a Year Was the Wager

On May 13, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal told players the monthly cycle was exhausting the studio and shrinking the patches. The launch plan had been a new drop every month so the Rust Belt always felt fresh. In practice, he wrote, that pace capped how much each update could change.

Running at that pace isn’t sustainable, or compatible with the bigger ambitions we have for this game.

Aleksander Grøndal, executive producer, Embark Studios development update

The studio’s twice-yearly major update plan kept a live team on balance, bugs, the store, and events. Big systems work would wait for two dates a year. Frozen Trail, then penciled for October, was named as the first of those dates and as the largest update since the October 30, 2025 launch.

Grøndal also flagged the late-game bind the cadence was meant to fix. Many Raiders had maxed the den and the skill-point cap. Few were taking the optional Expedition wipe because the rewards did not cover the pain of losing gear. The prestige loop’s fifth window closed on September 29. Embark has paused Expeditions until early 2027 while it reworks or possibly scraps the system.

The bet was blunt. Players could leave between the two large patches. The studio would try to make each return feel like a new game rather than a live-service drip.

A Long Slide Into September’s 39,900 Peak

The audience voted with the client. After a January peak of 465,097 on SteamCharts, monthly highs fell through spring and summer. By September the peak was 39,900, with an average of 21,256.1. Frozen Trail’s 185,443 concurrent Steam peak is more than four times that September high, and it is the strongest month on the chart since March’s 250,148.

MONTHLY STEAM PEAKS FOR ARC RAIDERS

The last-30-day average is still pulled down by the quiet weeks before October 8, which is why it sits at 39,118.5 even after an 84.03% gain. The peak is the number that moved. It also sits well above April’s 154,498, the last major-content bump on the same chart.

A returning player who had quit over the twice-a-year schedule wrote that they had called the studio lost, then took the line back after a few hours in the new patch. The clip-friendly toys made that confession easy to post. The chart is a colder instrument. It shows a winter smash, a five-month slide, and one outsized spike on a discounted weekend.

Frozen Trail Puts New Systems Under the Snow

Embark’s Frozen Trail 2.0 patch notes call the drop the biggest since launch. Pendola Pass is a snowy mountain map beyond the Rust Belt, with Flash Freeze weather, avalanche shelters, and a fallen Emperor to crack. Two new map conditions, Frigate and Redirection, rotate onto raids. The Frigate is a huge airborne carrier that players can board. Three new ARC units, the Bully, the Skulker, and the Hydra, change how fights start.

WHAT FROZEN TRAIL PUT IN THE GAME

• Traversal kit: A Grappling Hook, a Tether Launcher, and a Yank Grenade sit beside a Snap Hook that lost range, gained a higher power cost, and now spends 4% durability per use instead of 2%.
• Player housing: The Outpost unlocks through a project, adds a Research Bench, and crafts furniture from 100 Designs, most of them found Topside.
• Progression swap: Reward Passes replace Raider Decks and Cred, with 60 levels on a free track and a premium track, plus a Legacy Pass for older decks.
• Build choices: The skill tree now forces binary picks in the middle of each branch and a two-of-three pick at the end, after players said the old nodes did not define a loadout.
• Economy nips: The Anvil moves from Green to Blue rarity, stash caps rise to 328 slots without Expedition bonuses, and 22 new quests grant XP on completion.

Pendola Pass is also the test bed for Dynamic Loot Zones, so a residential block stays residential but pays more on one raid and less on the next. Solo vs. Squads matchmaking is gone while the studio rethinks it. That is not as easy to clip as a swing off a cliff, and all of it is the actual product of five extra months of work.

Swinging Around Pendola Pass Is the Easy Part

The Grappling Hook is why the patch left the patch-notes crowd. Raiders can latch onto cliffs, zip toward flying ARC, and chain swings without burning stamina the way a wall-run skill does. One player dropped a planned wall-run unlock after a single session with the hook, because the new tool already did the fantasy. Shareable clips followed in hours, including a Rocketeer being bullied on a line and camera-mode montages of the same chaos.

The Advanced Camera is the quieter toy. Quests that used to ask for a screenshot now want an in-world photo, and the official Japan account even asked players to post stills from the new map. That is a retention trick dressed as a souvenir. It gives lapsed players a reason to walk a ridge instead of racing a loot route, which is the habit the September chart had lost.

The Frigate does a similar job at a larger scale. People who boarded it came back talking about sound and size, not about a battle-pass track. A map some Raiders could not cover more than a sliver of in an hour before work is the other half of that pitch. The hook sells the trailer. The mountain and the ship are what a twice-yearly patch is supposed to be for.

Why the 185,443 Peak Still Has a Discount

Free play ran from October 8 at 09:00 UTC to October 12 at 08:00 UTC on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. SteamDB still lists a Weekend Deal at 50% off, $19.99 instead of $39.99, through October 15. The 185,443 high landed on that overlap. The 163,922 twenty-four-hour peak in the later SteamCharts sample is the first look after free play closed, and it is still a sale figure.

Leon San José Larsson, a fullstack engineer at Embark, put the same caution on the spike when it crossed 150,000. He wrote that it is great to see people back after almost a year, and that it will not last forever.

HOW THE WAGER HAS BEEN SCORED

1. May 13, 2026: Embark moves major updates to twice a year and names Frozen Trail as the first test.
2. September 29, 2026: Expedition 5 closes; the prestige wipe is paused until early 2027.
3. October 8, 2026: Frozen Trail 2.0 ships with a free-play window and a half-price sale.
4. October 12, 2026: Free play ends; the Steam discount continues.
5. October 13, 2026: Store Update 2.1.0 starts a PvE matchmaking test that runs through October 20.
6. October 15, 2026: The listed Weekend Deal is due to end.

If the twice-yearly bet is real, the chart that matters is the one after October 15, when new players have to pay $39.99 again and the hook is no longer new. Until that week prints a peak, 185,443 is a launch-weekend number with extra lighting.

Friendly Raiders Get One Week Without PvP

The other half of the wager is quieter than a grappling clip. Embark’s own split of how people play is 37% friendly co-op, 27% mixed, and 34% pure PvP. Over 70% of the friendly group, and 40% of the PvP group, wanted fewer hostile run-ins. Fifty-one percent of a studio survey asked for a dedicated PvE option. The original seven-year concept for the game was a PvE co-op raid with looting, before the team rebuilt it as a high-tension extraction shooter.

WHAT THE PVE TEST CHANGES

• Damage rules: Zero player-to-player damage; stun and fire throwables do not work on other Raiders.
• Loot: Overall loot value is lowered in PvE, while standard PvPvE raids get a slightly higher baseline during the test.
• Queues: Solos, duos, and trios share PvE sessions; Night Raid, Locked Gate, Hidden Bunker, Frigate, and Redirection stay out of the test.
• Risk leftover: ARC can re-acquire a downed player after an eight-second grace if they crawl.

The week-long PvE matchmaking test is live from October 13 at 11:00 CEST through October 20 at 11:00 CEST. When it ends, the toggle comes out. Grøndal was plain about the limit.

This test is not a promise that there will be a PvE mode in the future.

Aleksander Grøndal, executive producer, Embark Studios PvE blog

That sentence is the bet in miniature. Frozen Trail proved Embark can still fill a patch after five months. The sale and the free weekend proved it can still fill a server. Whether twice-yearly updates can hold a paying extraction audience, and whether the 37% who came for co-op get a lasting lane, is the part of the wager that is still on the table through October 20.