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PayPalARC Raiders has been a huge success for Nexon / Embark Studios with 12.4 million sales, and it seems sales are actually speeding up. Oh, and a new patch is out.
In a press release on January 13th Nexon confirmed ARC Raiders had surpassed 10 million sales by the end of December, with it accelerating as it's now up to 12.4 million. It even hit 960,000 concurrent players across all platforms in January. Thankfully, Embark have kept the anti-cheat enabled for Linux players - so it's one of the biggest multiplayer titles available for us.
That sales milestone is despite plenty of groans across the net about the use of generative AI for the player voices, which is used call out things like enemies and items in the world. Making me call into question my own stance on the ethics of it all, since I genuinely do see it as my favourite game right now. They did pay people for their voices, but it's still a form of generative AI. It's a tough one for me.
Embark also just released a new patch that gives a gift to all players that logged in before the end of January 13th (10:59 PM UTC) with a Gilded Pickaxe Raider Tool. The actual patch notes:
- Kettle
- Dev note: Reduced fire rate from 600 to 450. The previous fire rate was only realistically reachable by players using macros, which creates an unfair dynamic that favours using 3rd party software.
- Trigger ‘Nade
- Dev note: Trigger ‘Nade currently dominates PVP encounters, and players favour picking it over all our other grenades. This nerf aims to make it less usable as a “trigger-in-air” grenade, whilst keeping its usefulness as a sticky bomb. Damage falloff has been rebalanced to concentrate the damage closer to the center of the explosion, and deal less damage further away. The delay between triggering the grenade and it detonating, has been increased from 0.7s to 1.5s, giving players more time to react, and making it harder to time the detonation in air.
- Fixed a key card exploit that allowed players to keep room keys after using them.
- Lighting has been lowered in some areas on Stella Montis Night Raid making flashlights and listening more relevant.
Watch me completely fail with the Snap Hook in the below video while attempting to do something stupid:
Direct Link
Fanatical do still somehow have it discounted by 14% at time of publishing. Good time to grab it.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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You can also find comments for this article on social media: Then again, [51% of Japanese developers already uses it](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/51-of-japanese-game-makers-use-generative-ai). Pandora's Box is opened I guess?
Quoting: AL2009manWait, you aren't supposed to be covering Arc Raiders due to its GenAI usage?I touched on that in the article. Anyway, I cover whatever I see that fits based on my own personal choices and the industry at large. In this case, it's too big too ignore - especially so as a huge game that has the anti-cheat enabled for Linux. And personally speaking again - I see their use of generative AI as vastly more ethical than most other uses. They hired and paid people for the voices used. Not that it really adds anything to the game, bit silly really. They really didn't need AI for it.
Then again, [51% of Japanese developers already uses it](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/51-of-japanese-game-makers-use-generative-ai). Pandora's Box is opened I guess?
About the AI things.. Personally i don't care if its done in a way it doesn't annoy me. I didnt even know voices were made with that, but there hardly are any voiceactors anyway in this game. Just Few mission messages and couple of cinematics.
edit:
If their AI tools help the team of their size make a fun game of this calibre then i dont really have much to complain.
Compared to companies that trying to milk the most out of their players with sloppy AI art
Last edited by Xpander on 13 Jan 2026 at 2:25 pm UTC
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