ARC Raiders Player Count Hits 7-Month High as Frozen Trail and the Free Weekend Bring Raiders Back
The comeback is real. Three days after the Frozen Trail update went live on October 8, ARC Raiders climbed to more than 166,000 concurrent players on Steam, its highest count in about seven months, IGN reports citing SteamDB data. That is PC alone, and it doesn't count PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X|S players.
From 10K to 166K
The jump looks even bigger next to the summer numbers. According to IGN:
- The game peaked at nearly 500,000 Steam players after launch.
- It rarely went above 35,000 on PC from July onward.
- In September it fell to a low of about 10,000.
- After Frozen Trail it passed 166,670, a level it hadn't reached since early April.
IGN calls it the first notable spike since December 2025. It adds that it's too early to say whether the game has really found a second wind.
Why players are coming back
Frozen Trail is the first big content drop since Riven Tides in April, and Embark calls it its "biggest update since launch" in the official patch notes. The main additions:
- Pendola Pass, a large snowy mountain map beyond the Rust Belt. We covered it in our Frozen Trail breakdown.
- New ARC enemies: Bully, Skulker and Hydra. There's also the new Frigate map condition.
- New gear, including the Grappling Hook, the Tether Launcher and Basic/Advanced Cameras.
- A revamped Skill Tree, the Outpost hub, 22 new quests and the new Reward Pass.
The grappling hook is the clip machine. Players keep comparing it to swinging like Spider-Man, and GamingBible points to a popular Reddit post from a lapsed player that called Frozen Trail "one of the best updates ever in a video game."
The free weekend ends October 12
Timing helped too. ARC Raiders is free to play from October 8 to 12 on all platforms (Embark notes a €0.25 fee for PS5 in Germany), and it's 50% off during the event. If you've been thinking about trying it, tomorrow is your last free day. We listed what the free weekend includes in our hotfix 2.0.2 report.
Twitch Drops run longer. According to the patch notes, watching 60 minutes earns the Oxygen Respirator backpack attachment and 120 minutes earns the Mailbox, through November 4, 2026.
Known bugs
A crowd this size comes with growing pains. Embark's patch notes list known issues, still being fixed, on Pendola Pass, with the Outpost and with some quests.
What's next
- October 12: the free weekend ends.
- October 13–20: the PvE matchmaking toggle test begins. It's the next big test of whether the returning players stay.
- November 4: Twitch Drops end.
Whether ARC Raiders can hold six figures after the free weekend is the question to watch this week. We'll track the numbers.
