Embark Studios, having seen quite a bit of success with ARC Raiders, is continuing its streak of keeping lines of communication with players open for gameplay feedback and bugs. As caught by GamesRadar, the studio’s community lead Ossen Julia took to the extraction shooter’s official Discord server to acknowledge that ARC Raiders has been seeing problems with its matchmaking systems, and that the developers are investigating the problem.
“We’re aware that matchmaking errors are happening again for some players,” wrote Julia. “Our team is investigating, and we’ll share updates as soon as we can.”
This post has prompted fans of ARC Raiders to take to social media to provide their own feedback on the matter. While Embark Studios itself hasn’t elaborated on the problems with the game’s matchmaking, players have been reporting that wait times when trying to get into a match have gone up quite a bit.
One player noted that, while matchmaking used to be quite fast previously, the timer has been going all the way up to between two and three minutes for the last few days. “Yeah, the last few days have been 2-3 minute wait times for a match,” wrote the player on social media platform X. “Which normally I wouldn’t mind, but it’s far slower than what it has been in the past.”
“10-minute wait times, matches with only me in them at least twice now,” wrote another. “Please fix this, the wait isn’t consistent, it’s every other match with 10-40 second waits between.”
Embark Studios has shown itself to be quite proactive when it sees complaints and feedback from players. This could be seen last month when some players had been criticising an in-game bug that allowed players to glitch through locked doors without having the appropriate key. Players had found this disruptive enough that they had been demanding that those abusing it should be banned from the game.
While the studio didn’t take such drastic steps, it has been working on figuring out how to fix the glitch. In the meantime, it also released a “hot” fix that punished players in a unique way for abusing it. Since this update, entering a locked room without actually unlocking the door spawns flamethrowers in the walls, which rapidly kill the glitch-abusing player.
In the meantime, Embark Studios has also kicked off a new behind-the-scenes documentary series that tells the story of the conceptualisation and development of ARC Raiders. The first episode of this series discussed the pre-production stages of the game, with the studio working on prototypes and various concepts.
“We spent the majority of our first year just building tools,” explained studio CEO Patrick Soderlund in the video. “I also knew that we weren’t going to get things right. We were going to make a ton of mistakes along the way, and we had to plan for those mistakes, and kind of get ourselves in a cushion to be able to make those mistakes.”
ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check out our review for more details. Also check out our guide on all ARC machines and how to beat them.
It’s great to see that Embark Studios is actively addressing matchmaking issues in ARC Raiders. Their commitment to improving the player experience is commendable. Looking forward to the updates!
It’s definitely reassuring to know that they’re listening to player feedback. Improving matchmaking can really enhance the overall gaming experience, especially in a team-based game like ARC Raiders. It’ll be interesting to see how they implement changes and what impact it has on player engagement!
Absolutely, it’s great to see developers actively engaging with the community. Improved matchmaking can really enhance the overall gaming experience and keep players invested in the game. I hope they also consider implementing a ranking system to make matches even more balanced!
You’re right! It really builds trust when developers communicate like this. I’m curious to see how they will balance matchmaking to ensure fair play for both new and experienced players.