ARC Raiders has had a bit of a tumultuous journey so far. Launching last year to waves of praise and millions of copies sold, Embark Studios have struggled somewhat to keep fans engaged across its seasons. After promising to overhaul its live-service strategy, the team have now unveiled the next major update for ARC Raiders: Frozen Trail.

Taking to their blog to make the announcement, the team at Embark Studios officially detailed the next major update coming to ARC Raiders. Launching on the 8th of October, the Frozen Trail is described as “our biggest update since launch” and has supposedly “been designed to address some of the broader questions that the community has been asking.”

While we did not get a full breakdown of everything coming with the update, some of the most notable include:

• New Map (Shani)
  • Greater focus on verticality, exploration, and “opportunities for discovery”
• “Enourmous” new ARC Operation
  • Described as “one of the most intense experiences ARC Raiders has offered to date”
• 2 new ARC enemies
• New Raider Outpost base
• Reworked skill tree for deeper progression
• New weapons (plus weapon personalisation)

As of now, Embark are holding back on further specifics, promising to share “more details with you in September.”

That said, what has been revealed so far does appear to be quite promising. Hopefully this slower, more deliberate rollout of bigger updates proves to be fruitful in the long term.

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KitGuru says: What do you think of the Frozen Trail update? Is it a step up compared to previous patches? What do you hope to see from the new ‘outpost’? Let us know down below.

While Embark Studios have continuously updated ARC Raiders with new content and updates, general sentiment surrounding the popular extraction shooter has waned somewhat over the past months. As a result, the team have now announced that they are shifting their live-service plans, replacing smaller more consistent updates with “major updates twice a year.”

Following the successful launch of ARC Raiders last year, Embark Studios shared a detailed 2026 roadmap, confirming that they planned to release updates on a monthly basis. While the team have managed to maintain this promise so far, reactions to the updates themselves have been less-than-stellar.

It appears the team are listening, with Embark Studios taking to their blog to confirm some pretty wide-sweeping changes, writing:

“When ARC Raiders launched, we planned to offer monthly updates. The intention was to keep you all engaged, to ensure the game always felt fresh, and to give you reasons to keep braving topside. But once the game was in players' hands, we saw that the kind of long-term experience we want to create for ARC Raiders requires more transformative updates.”

Describing this previous schedule as not “sustainable, or compatible with the bigger ambitions we have for this game,” Embark are now shifting strategies, confirming that “going forward, we've made the decision to release major updates twice a year – larger in scale, more impactful, with the goal to genuinely change how you play the game.”

Of course, a dedicated team will persist to ensure that day-to-day balance changes, updates and tweaks can continue to be released at regular intervals. That said, in terms of substantial content updates, these will now come far less often, but should be more exciting.

Offering a tease on what to expect from this new release schedule, the team confirmed that the next major update will arrive in October. Dubbed the ‘Frozen Trail’, this content drop will introduce:

• A new landscape in the Rust Belt (the largest so far)
• The biggest ARC Operation so far (with new enemies, fresh designs and more)
• New progression system
• An improved skill tree
• New weapons, items and more

KitGuru says: What did you think of ARC Raiders’ current live-service approach? Did it need an overhaul? Are you more or less hopeful for the future of the game in the wake of these changes? Let us know down below.