ARC Raiders Has Lost 93% of Its Steam Peak Player Count, Putting More Pressure on October’s Frozen Trail Update

ARC Raiders player count on Steam is down 93% from its all-time peak, as Embark prepares Frozen Trail update.

Embark changed ARC Raiders’ release schedule in May, dropping the original monthly plan in favor of two major updates per year. Its next big update is Frozen Trail, releasing on October 8, which the studio says will be its biggest update since launch, adding a new frozen map, a high-level ARC Operation, new enemies, Outposts, Skill Tree changes, weapons, gadgets and progression work. The devs will share more details in September.

On the community side, the ARC Raiders subreddit is split between players worried about retention and those waiting to see what Frozen Trail can do. In a thread discussing the player-count decline, one user said, “the problem is not numbers, but content,” adding that veteran players have “no endgame” while cheating and duping remain complaints.

Another user pointed directly at the effect a smaller population can have, saying ARC Raiders “needs a decent sized player base for the matchmaking to function correctly.“

Now the Steam numbers for the game make things hard to ignore.

ARC Raiders Player Count Is Down 93% From Its Steam Peak

ARC Raiders currently sits at a 24-hour peak of 34,045 players on Steam (via SteamDB). Its all-time Steam record is 481,966 concurrent players, set on November 16, 2025, just 17 days after the game’s October 30 Steam release.

That’s a drop of 447,921 concurrent players between the record and the latest 24-hour high. In percentage terms, the 24-hour peak is 92.94% below the all-time record, leaving the current daily high at only 7.06% of its peak. SteamDB was also showing 15,600 players live when we last checked, which sits roughly 96.8% below that record.

We’ve also compiled month-by-month numbers, which makes the drop much easier to see. ARC Raiders launched on Steam on October 30, 2025, and SteamDB recorded a 264,673 concurrent peak during those final two days of October. It then set its record in November before briefly recovering over the holidays and beginning a much steeper slide in February.

Check out the ARC Raider’s monthly peak player count on Steam below:

• October 2025: 264,673 peak players
• November 2025: 481,966 peak players
• December 2025: 439,118 peak players
• January 2026: 466,372 peak players
• February 2026: 375,294 peak players
• March 2026: 252,050 peak players
• April 2026: 154,498 peak players
• May 2026: 122,157 peak players
• June 2026: 69,021 peak playersJ
• July 2026: 50,376 peak players

Those are ugly concurrency numbers for sure, though we need to keep in mind that this is Steam data only. It doesn’t measure the full player population across other platforms. Still, losing more than nine-tenths of a record concurrent peak on one platform gives Embark a pretty obvious retention problem to solve.

Update 1.42.0 landed on August 18 with Phantom Targets Part 2, regional Map Condition scheduling and more anti-cheat work. Embark says recent changes with Anybrain and Denuvo Anti-Cheat led to action against a large number of cheating accounts, while work on teaming and matchmaking abuse is continuing.

Frozen Trail now has a clearer job than simply giving regulars a new map. It needs to give people who drifted away a reason to reinstall on October 8. Though, based on some community commentary, it seems this update is giving at least some lapsed players a reason to check back in.

Would Frozen Trail be enough to bring you back to ARC Raiders after a 93% Steam peak decline? Let us know in the comments.