ARC Raiders Wants Your Voice: Speranza Security Contest Puts Player Lines on the Gondola Extract
Embark Studios is looking for new voices for ARC Raiders, and this time it means real players. In a news post published October 20, the studio opened Speranza Security Recruitment, a community contest where you record a line as a Gondola extraction operator. The best entries are meant to ship in the game as voice lines for the Ballistic Gondola extract around Pendola Pass. The official rules say entries close October 26.
What the contest is
The in-game story is simple. ARC activity is rising in the Northern Frontiers, Tube Operators are working overtime, and Shani needs extra hands to talk frozen Raiders home from Pendola Pass. Your job is to be the person on the other end of the radio when a Raider calls in a Gondola, and to tell them roughly where it will land.
You pick one of two categories:
- Category A, Scripted: perform one of eight lines Embark wrote, word for word. All of them follow the same idea: confirm the call, hesitate a bit, then give a compass direction such as "head northwest."
- Category B, Original: write your own line. Per the rules, it has to address the player as "Raider," acknowledge the extraction call within the first five seconds, mention the Ballistic Gondola and give one of eight compass directions.
The rules that matter
Embark's announcement adds plenty of lore guidance for Category B. Operators are civilians who never go topside, never introduce themselves by name and can't see the surface. The Gondolas are described as new, experimental tech that everyone is still learning to use. The studio also asks writers to avoid weather and specific ARC machines, since those vary between rounds.
Some things will get an entry filtered out:
- Contemporary slang (Embark specifically names "clankers")
- Memes, pop culture, streamer catchphrases or references to other games
- Religious, political or hateful content, and lines about present-day AI
The official rules set the technical side:
- Who: 18 or older (or the local age of majority), with an Embark ID in good standing. One entry per person, in one category only.
- Format: a WAV file of your own natural voice, up to three takes of no more than 10 seconds each.
- No AI and no effects: no AI voices, text-to-speech, voice changers or pitch correction, and no impressions of real people or ARC Raiders cast members. Trimming silence is the only editing allowed.
- Rights: by entering, you give Embark a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free license to use your recording. Read that section before you submit.
The prize
Embark's development team, including its narrative and audio teams, will pick up to three winners. It's judged on skill, not drawn at random. Each winner gets 2,400 Raider Tokens (valued at about $20), and the plan is for their line to be added as an extraction operator voice line. The rules note that Embark doesn't promise when the lines will be added, or how often players will hear them.
What's next
- Now through October 26: entries are open. The window began at 18:00 CEST on October 20 and closes at 23:59 CET on October 26, which is 6:59 PM ET. As The Click points out, that's 10:59 PM GMT in the UK.
- October 22: separately, Embark starts sending its PvE test survey to a representative sample of players.
- November: Embark expects to share what comes next for PvE. For more on that, see our Update 2.2 and PvE test wrap-up.
This is Embark's second community contest this month, after the Say Freeze photo competition. This one is bigger, though: the winners won't just get tokens. If all goes to plan, every Raider who calls in a Gondola could end up hearing their voice.
