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Embark Studios slows down ARC Raiders content as it focuses on its "biggest update yet"

Frozen Trail will arrive in October, giving fans quite the wait.
Alex Hopley Editor UK 14 May 2026

Embark Studios, the developer behind the hit extraction shooter ARC Raiders, has informed players that it's going to be changing how it works on updates going forward. The studio is giving players a longer wait between content drops, so that they can be more substantial. The first example of this is the upcoming Frozen Trail update, which lands in October.

That gives us five months to wait before the next update, however Embark revealed in a new Steam post that Frozen Trail will be the "biggest, most exciting update yet." It includes the game's largest map to-date, a new and ambitious ARC Operation with unique behaviours and designs, new progression systems, skill trees, weapons, cosmetics, and more.

Going forward, content updates will be released twice a year. But, you don't have to worry about a certain weapon being broken or an enemy being bugged, as live updates will still come regularly to the game, sorting out things like balance, store updates, and bug fixing.

We'll have to see how ARC Raiders fans keep themselves entertained over the course of the next five months. We have seen somewhat of a player base drop off on SteamDB, but ARC Raiders still pulls in around 100,000 players a day give or take a few thousand, making it an incredibly popular title.

Editor UK Alex Hopley covered the video game industry for Gamereactor, from new announcements and launches to the business behind them. He also wrote on tech, film and entertainment, and his coverage wasn't tied to any one region.
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