There seems to be no cap on how successful Arc Raiders can become. From the very start, it broke expectations by reaching over 100,000 playing within 30 minutes of the game launching and has since gone on quite the run, with the latest milestone hitting 12 million players worldwide.
"Reaching 12 million downloads is a milestone we owe entirely to the players,” Aleksander Grøndal, executive producer of Arc Raiders, says in a press release. “The community of raiders has helped shape this game from the very beginning, and their passion, feedback, and ingenuity continue to guide how we build, support, and grow this world for the long term."
Today we're celebrating a huge milestone... since launch we’ve seen over 12 million Raiders ascend from Speranza to raid the Rust Belt!We crafted a special gift to celebrate 10M players, right as you blew straight past it over the winter break! To commemorate the occasion, any… pic.twitter.com/VNC1W1MubeJanuary 13, 2026
Arc Raiders' success is no doubt in part thanks to Embark's impressive ability to find its own niche of relaxed or at least kinda chill extraction shooters, a chunk of the genre that was not widely explored. I express this in my Arc Raiders review, but before this game, I thought a prerequisite of extraction shooters was a feeling of overwhelming dread, fear, and anger, in that order, but I was wrong.
Arc Raiders has managed to cultivate two kinds of audiences. One, the classic PvP group full of extract rats and dirty liars, the other, PvEers who actually help one another and hold no animosity against their fellow primate—a new way to play.
To celebrate this milestone of 12 million players actually working together (or at least half of them), Embark has decided to gift all who want it a gilded pickaxe. It's quite the upgrade to the old grey one: "To celebrate the milestone and thank the global Raider community—intended as a gift to Raiders for helping Embark Studios reach the 10 million downloads milestone, which was quickly surpassed—Embark is offering a free in-game reward. The Gilded Pickaxe is available to all players for a limited time."
You can get the golden pickaxe by simply logging into the game today at 2 am PST/ 5 am EST/ 10 am GMT/ 11 am CET. But the gift won't wait around in your in-game inbox forever. You have until the end of today to claim it, so be sure to log in tonight to grab your prize.
As impressive as this all is, it's just the beginning for what Embark is planning for Arc Raiders, with plans going up to at least 10 years: "The world of Speranza continues to evolve. Embark Studios will be sharing more details on future updates and new content in the months ahead. Raiders are encouraged to stay tuned to Arc Raiders’ official channels for upcoming announcements and developments."
