Arc Raiders' devs didn't expect such a passionate PvE-only crowd

Arc Raiders' developers say pre-launch playtests saw raiders acting much more violently toward one another than the community has post-launch. Embark production director Caio Braga mentioned this to us multiple times after his talk at GDC.

The team found the concept only became fun once PvP was added. When we asked Braga how players received the game compared to their pre-release testing, he replied that "the most obvious [thing] was the PvE crowd." Arc Raiders' most defining factor in the extraction genre is that many players would rather be allies and stick it to the Arc machines.

That has produced so-called 'friendly lobbies', though Embark insists it's not that binary.

arc raiders, embark, caio braga, gdc, pre-launch, playtests, pve, pvp, friendly lobbies, extraction genre