Embark makes free-to-play Arc Raiders sound like a nightmare, says its $40 price let it cut a lot of un-fun crap: "Crafting no longer has timers on it that you have to wait out"

Arc Raiders.

Embark Studios decided to save its extraction shooter Arc Raiders from the Sisyphean toil of free-to-play gaming, and no one is happier about it than its own developers.

In fact, design director Virgil Watkins makes Arc Raiders' transition from free-to-play to its current $40-up-front situation sound like a heavenly blessing. He discusses Embark's choice to ultimately abandon free-to-play in an ongoing YouTube series about how Arc Raiders was made, saying that "it's actually, in many ways, made it drastically easier."