ARC Attackers reserves the right to stop monthly updates

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ARC Attackers reserves the right to stop monthly updates

The life of a popular live service game is not easy. If you spam, you’re bound to break the game sooner or later, and you have to contend with a little control from the players. On the other hand, taking too long between updates, you get the phrase ‘dead game’.

Neither option is particularly exciting to tackle, but ARC Raiders developer Embark decided to double-dip this year.

After the spectacular launch in 2025, the world’s best post-apocalyptic shooter has maintained a strong monthly update schedule. Once the honeymoon period was over, however, cracks in content and moderation began to appear. The first signs of ‘Helldivers Syndrome’ had begun.

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To combat this, Embark has dropped a new update schedule: instead of one content update per month, you get two updates per year. It may be an over-correction, but right now, ARC Raiders’ best shot is to come out of the death revival.

ARC Raiders Avoid Helldivers 2 Cycle

Although not in the DSM-5, Helldivers Syndrome is characterized by a cycle of revisions focused on correcting the previous revision because somewhere, somehow, it did something out of balance, and people are now very crazy about it.

Helldivers 2 came out in February 2024 and had a meteoric rise, but Arrowhead has spent most of the last two years having to defend or correct its previous decisions. Inevitably, many of these reforms go too far, creating further problems and fueling public outrage.

Update 6.2.0, which was released two weeks ago, received a very negative review on Steam, and it is far from the first time that an update sent a review of Helldivers 2 to fall.

While Embark hasn’t been as wrong as Arrowhead with its updates to ARC Raiders, the reality is that the monthly update cycle makes a bad patch a matter of when, not if.

Cracks in content and measurement began to appear. The first signs of ‘Helldivers Syndrome’ had begun.

A slow upgrade plan is the way to go for ARC Raiders, but it’s a path with its own challenges Embark has to deal with.

That is not to say that the implementation of this change was flawless. I don’t think it’s very fair for the public to jump from a monthly review process to a bi-annual review. A phased approach would have been much easier to stomach and probably would have avoided some of the current backlash.

Another potential problem is whether getting content drops twice a year is enough to keep the game alive. ARC Raiders doesn’t exactly have a native game, and while that’s not unusual for live service games, six months is a long time between content updates.

Inevitably, many players will leave: some will leave for good, others will return only twice a year to ‘check on things’ before disappearing again.

ARC Raiders is currently available for PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5.