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Arc Raiders, the sport PC Gamer shooter skilled Morgan Park known as “essentially the most thrilling extraction shooter of 2025,” is about to launch on October 30. That is not rather more than a month away, however you will have an opportunity to provide it a go yet another time earlier than it occurs within the upcoming server slam, an open-to-all playtest set to run October 17-19.
I am undecided after we began calling these items “server slams” fairly than playtests, however the time period is actually evocative in reflecting the objective: Making certain, as a lot as such a factor is feasible, that the servers for a preferred on-line recreation will not collapse underneath the load of the launch-day rush of gamers. To that finish, the Arc Raiders slam is broad open, out there on all platforms—Steam and Epic for PC, plus PlayStation 5 and Xbox Sequence X/S—and with no pre-registration required: Simply present and go.
“That is the place we’ll actually put Arc Raiders by way of its paces forward of full launch,” govt producer Aleksander Grøndal mentioned. “Our objective is easy: Make it possible for on October 30, when the servers go reside, each participant experiences the sport precisely as we have supposed—polished, balanced, and prepared for motion.”
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Hopefully, anyway, though these items have a behavior of going sideways when the large day comes. As PC Gamer’s Fraser Brown identified when he declared 2024 “the yr of server points” (in February, no much less), well-liked hits like Helldivers 2 and Final Epoch struggled badly at launch underneath the load of sudden curiosity. Extra not too long ago, Funcom expressed confidence that Dune: Awakening servers would not implode at launch, and whereas it wasn’t a whole disaster, yeah, there have been issues.
Arc Raiders might effectively face comparable challenges, as a result of it is simply that good: Jake Tucker, who is aware of a factor or two about shooters himself, mentioned final yr that it “could possibly be the extraction shooter that lastly brings the style to the plenty.” And if these plenty all present up directly on launch day, it would get a bit crowded. A server stress take a look at will not eradicate that risk utterly, but it surely ought to a minimum of spotlight any apparent points which will have gone missed amidst all of the pre-release pleasure.
Developer Embark Studios mentioned entry to the server slam “will roll out slowly on day one”—how precisely that can work is not clear at this level, however the studio mentioned extra data shall be supplied nearer to kickoff. Progress is not going to carry over into the total launch of Arc Raiders, however everybody who takes half within the take a look at will get an unique Server Slam backpack to be used within the full recreation.
Preorders for Arc Raiders can be found now on Steam and the Epic Video games Retailer, at $40/£31/€40 for the bottom recreation, or $60/£50/€60 for the deluxe version, the variations between that are listed under. Embark mentioned it is opting to keep away from the free-to-play mannequin so it could “focus extra on the enjoyable” fairly than “encouraging gamers to make purchases.”
