Arc Raiders is having a weekend. Concurrent players on Steam hit 166,670 in the first 48 hours after Embark Studios dropped its Frozen Trail 2.0 update, the highest the game has seen since early April, and the first real spike the extraction shooter has managed since December 2025.
The numbers are a sharp swing from where the game was a month ago. In September, Arc Raiders fell to a low of about 10,000 concurrent players on Steam, down from its all-time peak of nearly 500,000 at launch last October. The 2.0 update, a free weekend running through October 12, and a 50% discount on all platforms have combined to pull lapsed Raiders back in, according to the Frozen Trail patch notes and IGN’s report.
Frozen Trail is the biggest content drop Arc Raiders has had since launch. The headline addition is Pendola Pass, a snowy mountain map that sits outside the Rust Belt. It comes with three new Arc enemies (Bully, Skulker, Hydra), two new weapons, a reworked skill tree, a new Outpost hub with 100 craftable furniture items, and a fresh Reward Pass replacing the old Raider Decks. The change players keep talking about is the Grappling Hook, which lets you swing off cliffs and onto flying Arc units. IGN’s report says fans are already comparing it to Spider-Man traversal, and clips of people zipping around Pendola Pass have filled the r/ARC_Raiders subreddit.
A free weekend runs through October 12, and Arc Raiders is 50% off on Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. Twitch Drops are also live through November 4: watch 60 minutes for an Oxygen Respirator backpack, 120 minutes for a Mailbox attachment.
Our read: This is the kind of rebound the studio needed after a rough summer. The twice-a-year update cadence had upset longtime players, and the September low of 10,000 was a real warning sign for a live-service shooter less than a year out from launch. Frozen Trail is doing what a major content drop is supposed to do: give lapsed players a reason to come back, and give new players a reason to stay. The next test is whether the count holds after the free weekend ends on October 12. If it does, the studio can credibly claim the comeback was real. If it collapses back to 30,000, this looks more like a brief spike than a turnaround. Either way, a PvE mode test is coming, and the studio’s other shooter, The Finals, is already slated for film and TV adaptations, so there’s a clear path to keep the audience engaged beyond this weekend.
Arc Raiders on Steam: the player count swing
| Milestone | Concurrent players (Steam) | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Launch all-time peak | ~500,000 | October 2025 |
| September 2026 low | ~10,000 | September 2026 |
| 7-month high after 2.0 | 166,670 | October 10, 2026 |
| Pixel Herald tracked 24-hour peak* | 124,248 | Today |
*Source: Steam player data tracked by Pixel Herald. Hourly readings since October 10, 2026.
Pixel Herald’s own hourly tracker is currently showing Arc Raiders at 118,656 concurrent players with a 24-hour peak of 124,248, the highest we’ve recorded since we started watching the game. The IGN-cited 166,670 number is a separate live reading at the moment that report was published; both are real-time measurements of the same surge.
Arc Raiders is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The free weekend runs through October 12, the sale ends on the same day, and the PvE mode test is the next thing on the studio’s roadmap.
Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report
Comments
Loading comments…