The extraction shooter ARC Raiders is out and appears to work on Linux

ARC Raiders from Embark Studios has released today and even though it has anti-cheat, it still appears to run just fine on Desktop Linux.

What is it? A PvPvE extraction shooter set in a world filled with lethal machines, where humans live underground and go raiding for supplies up top. You can play it alone, or in a squad of up to three players. It's all about risk versus reward, with the loop of running around dangerous areas to find loot.

Much like The Finals from the same developer, ARC Raiders also has Easy Anti-Cheat but it appears they have it enabled here as well since I've had no problems jumping into it today to test it out with the release. Embark didn't reply to repeated emails from GamingOnLinux to talk about Linux and Proton, but still nice to see it working. For now, our anti-cheat page lists it as working.

On my Desktop system with Kubuntu 25.10 and an AMD Radeon 6800 XT (Mesa 25.2.3) with Proton 9 it wouldn't load it at all, but swapping over the Proton version to Proton Experimental and so far I haven't encountered a single issue. Performance is good enough at 2560x1440 with all settings on Epic, with AMD FSR 3 Balanced it so far hasn't dipped below 60FPS even once and feels great overall.

I'm hoping that we don't see it constantly break on Linux with Proton like we do fairly often with The Finals, and for it to just keep working like it is now as it's quite impressive. Again, it shows Linux can be an excellent platform for gaming - as long as developers don't actively block it.

Since it's an extraction shooter, it's very tense. Your group can encounter another group of players at any time, and as I found it in my first group session - some people will shoot first and ask questions later. Other times, people will wave and ask you not to shoot, so you all put away your weapons and slowly walk away from each other.

It's not just other players here though, there's also all the different machines you're fighting against both on land and in the air that make it quite a rush to run through and so some looting. Weird little speedy spider things that creep me out, exploding roller balls, multiple flying machines with guns and plenty more.

Once you're done looting with a nice full backpack, you can extract from different locations on the map to return home to craft, trade, pick up more quests and so on. Each extraction point has a limited timer and extracting isn't always easy since other players might be stalking it, or there might machines flying around that take notice of the noise. Like what happened to my group earlier, as multiple flying NPCs were around the extraction point and downed us both. But here's where it's not too punishing, you can still crawl and activate the extraction. Which I thought was a nice touch.

Downed by not out, we managed to extract in the above picture. Phew.

However, I wouldn't be doing my full duty here though if I didn't point out the generative AI message on Steam, which the developers put up that notes:

During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.

However, the developer has confirmed multiple times elsewhere that this type of AI is only used for text to speech for voice barks like "go over here" or to point out items in the world using the same text-to-speech system as in The Finals. For this they hired actual voice actors too as noted by RPS.

There's also numerous in-game purchases, plenty of which are not particularly cheap for the customization.

The game has only just begun life, and I've only just begun exploring it, so likely more to come on this one from me. Hopefully not a report on the anti-cheat suddenly being blocked but we'll see.

Right now, Fanatical has it with 14% off.