Arc Raiders devs spent 3 years fighting "on a daily basis" over whether it was "a battle royale," "a hero looter shooter," "a co-op Soul game," or "a co-op Shadow of the Colossus game"

Arc Raiders screenshot of player running from a Leaper robot.

Arc Raiders is an extraction shooter. There's no doubt about that, right? Apparently, that fact wasn't obvious to developer Embark Studios when the game was early in development – or even several years into production. Different teams within the studio had different, contradictory ideas about what the game should be, and it was only after a dramatic shift in production that the game finally started to take shape.

"I started in 2020 at Embark, one year into production, and no one could answer me what the game was," according to production director Caio Braga, speaking at a Game Developer Conference panel attended by GamesRadar+. "Or everyone could, actually, but the answers are very different. You'd ask someone who would say it's a battle royale versus Arc, or it's a co-op Shadow of Colossus game, or a hero looter shooter."