Following a week of testing, the limited-time PvE mode for Arc Raiders has come to an end on October 20, 2026.
Shortly after the mode was taken offline, Embark shared some interesting stats regarding the test via their social media handles.
As per an official statement from the dev team, more than 30 million rounds were played on the Arc Raiders PvE game mode during the week it was live, highlighting the community’s interest in the experiment.
While attaining 30 million players in the limited-time mode is certainly no small feat, it still shouldn’t come as a surprise since a PvE mode was easily the most heavily requested game mode ever since Arc Raiders initially went live in October 2026.
Throughout the game’s lifespan, a good portion of the community repeatedly raised concerns about dying to “rats” and having an unenjoyable overall experience in the PvPvE mode, while expressing an interest in wanting to explore the game’s PvE aspects further.
This issue was somewhat alleviated with the introduction of an aggression-based matchmaking system in late 2025, but it failed to completely resolve the problem.
That being said, Arc Raiders’ experimental PvE mode wasn’t free from issues either. It didn’t take long for players to start “exploiting” this mode to farm resources quickly after expending gear in the regular game mode. Reports of players deliberately griefing others using game mechanics like body-blocking and lure grenades were also plenty in number.
The Arc Raiders PvE mode is a limited-time experimental mode. These kinds of issues are to be expected. The devs have called upon players to share their experiences with this mode while also asking for suggestions from the community via a recent blog post.
At the time of writing, the future of Arc Raiders PvE remains uncertain. While Embark hasn’t officially confirmed whether the game mode is returning, the numbers clearly hint towards the devs getting something right, and as such, it’s safe to expect this mode, or a different iteration of this mode, to return to the extraction shooter at some point in the future.
