Embark previews Arc Raiders' 2026 roadmap and multiple new maps

Buoyed by a launch wave that surpassed 12 million players in a few months, Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios is preparing a suite of new content for its 2026 roadmap, design lead Virgil Watkins told Gamesradar.

Watkins said the studio plans to reveal "a chunk of a roadmap for the upcoming months" but is still "deciding exactly that cadence," and that content such as maps, weapons, objectives and enemies will be parceled out "across the coming year." He described an ambition to pair new maps with different experiences — whether map or weather conditions, enemy types or compositions, or escalated loot — citing Stella Montis as a jump that added rarer tech, new blueprints and the Shredder enemy, which "currently only appears in Stella Montis." He also said the studio expects "multiple maps coming this year" across a "spectrum of size," from smaller areas to ones "even grander than what we've got now."

Watkins said map design weighs PvE versus PvP tendencies, server and client performance limits (noting Dam, aka Battlegrounds, is "kind of right up to the line for performance" because of far vistas and density) and pacing factors such as spawn counts, travel times, collapse rates, drone and player density, and loot dispersion. For now, the precise schedule and detailed map plans remain undecided beyond the upcoming roadmap release he said will arrive "sometime soon."

Key Topics

Culture, Embark Studios, Arc Raiders, Virgil Watkins, Stella Montis, Shredder