Arc Raiders Convinced a Million Players to Delete Their Loot, Now They Want to Make It Fun

There is a special kind of sickness in the extraction shooter community that makes us crave the sweet release of losing everything we worked for.

I have always had a love-hate relationship with the "wipe" mechanic in this genre. On one hand, it levels the playing field and gets rid of the chads running around with endgame gear, but on the other, it hurts my soul to see my stash number hit zero. Arc Raiders decided to do things differently by making the wipe optional via "Expedition Projects," and I figured most people would clutch their pearls and refuse to let go.

I was wrong.

In a recent chat with the folks over at PCGamesN, Embark Studios' design director Virgil Watkins dropped some wild stats. It turns out that over a million players decided to participate in the first Expedition and wipe their progress.

The Million Maniac March

That number is staggering. Usually, you have to force players to reset by holding a gun to their head (or a server update), but here, people lined up for it.

The carrot on the stick was simple: donate items to the project, wipe your account, and get permanent skill points for the next cycle. Watkins revealed that out of the million players who pulled the trigger, about 35% to 40% of them managed to hit the maximum requirement.

That requirement involved generating a stash value of five million credits, which is a lot of loose screws and microchips.

The Hoarding Problem

This is where the design hit a snag. To get those five million credits, players stopped playing the game like a shooter and started playing it like a stock market simulator.

Watkins admitted that the communication around this goal came "a bit too late." Because players suddenly realized they needed a mountain of cash to get the full reward, they stopped taking risks, stopped bringing in their best gear, and just hoarded.

I saw this myself. The servers were full of rats scurrying around, terrified to lose a single credit because they needed it for the wipe. It essentially disincentivized actually using the cool guns you spent weeks unlocking. Watkins acknowledges this "potential outcome of disincentivizing using your gear" is something they are looking to revise.

Future Wipes and Data Tracking

Embark is currently staring at a mountain of data to figure out how to fix this for round two. Watkins mentioned they can see down to "the individual pieces of rubber people donated." That is a terrifying level of surveillance, but if it makes the game better, I am all for it.

The goal now is to make the wipe process engaging for everyone, not just the hardcore grinders. They want to find ways to incentivize resets without forcing players to become misers who refuse to fire a bullet because ammo costs money.

The next reset window opens in roughly six weeks. I am hoping they cook up a challenge that rewards skill rather than just net worth. Until then, I will be here, counting my rubber scraps.

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