Arc Raiders director: studios need room to pivot after live-service failures

At GDC, Arc Raiders production director Caio Braga said Embark's breakout extraction shooter emerged from a development cycle that included multiple massive directional pivots—turning points where many other game productions would have been cancelled. In a post-talk interview, Braga said the string of high-profile live-service launch failures that followed Embark's big hit makes him hope other projects are given the same space to reinvent themselves that Arc Raiders enjoyed.

Part of the difficulty, he added, is an industry tendency to treat another studio's breakout launch as a roadmap. Embark's process, where a roughly 100-strong staff all had considerable autonomy to pursue their own vision, simply wouldn't be feasible at many other studios.

Braga argued game development is not an exact formula and works best when teams can adjust or repurpose their plans to fit circumstances—a creative freedom Embark was allowed but many studios lack.

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