ARC Raiders hits a peak of 152,547 today on Steam's Most Played chart, checked at 16:23 KST

ARC Raiders is drawing a crowd on Steam again: Embark Studios’ extraction shooter recorded a peak of 152,547 today on Steam’s Most Played chart, checked at 16:23 KST on October 13. At that moment it sat at No. 14, with 50,500 people in the game.

That reading arrives five days after the Frozen Trail 2.0 update, which Embark describes as its biggest update since launch. The studio posted the update on Steam on October 8.

What Frozen Trail added

According to Embark’s patch notes and its Steam announcement, the update brings:

• a new map, Pendola Pass, plus two new map conditions called Frigate and Redirection
• three new enemy types: Bully, Skulker and Hydra
• two new weapons, the Bantam and the Stiletto, along with Amplified Weapons
• new gear, including a Grappling Hook, Basic and Advanced Cameras, a Tether Launcher, a Yank Grenade, a Mountaineer’s Detector, and a Banjo and Harmonica
• the Outpost, a base space with a new Research Bench and craftable furniture unlocked by lootable “Design” items
• a revamped skill tree, 22 additional quests, a new Reward Pass, Weapon Stencils, a remapped default gamepad layout and a reworked map selection screen
• two extra stash upgrade levels, raising the cap to 328 slots before Expedition bonuses, and a new Collector DLC, which the notes say is available now

The free week

Embark also opened the full game to everyone on Steam for a limited time. Its free play announcement set the window from 11:00 CEST on October 8 to 10:00 CEST on October 12, timed ahead of the game’s first anniversary, so Frozen Trail and the free access began on the same day.

What we don’t know yet

Steam’s chart gives a snapshot, not a before-and-after comparison, and we did not have a verified pre-update figure from the chart for this round. That means we can’t confirm reports elsewhere that the player count has quadrupled. It is also unclear how much of the rise comes from the update itself rather than the free week, and how many players stayed after free access ended. Embark has not shared player numbers for other platforms in these posts.