ARC Raiders dominates Steam’s November 2025 chart with 7.7 million copies sold

ARC Raiders has quietly turned into one of 2025’s biggest surprises. What started as a stylish co-op extraction shooter from Embark Studios is now a fully fledged blockbuster, pulling in a huge audience in a year stacked with heavyweight releases. A new report from analytics firm Alinea Analytics puts hard numbers behind the buzz: ARC Raiders was the best-selling game on Steam in November 2025 by copies sold and has already pushed past 7.7 million sales across all platforms combined.

For a brand new IP launching into a crowded multiplayer market, that is the kind of performance that instantly moves a game from curiosity to phenomenon and forces the rest of the genre to pay attention.

Sales figures and platform split

The report also shows just how central the PC audience is to that success. Alinea estimates that at least half of every copy sold so far has come from Steam alone, with the remaining millions split between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S players. During the single week of November 16 to 22, ARC Raiders is said to have moved nearly 750,000 copies on its own, a staggering figure for any premium release, let alone a new multiplayer experiment. That surge was enough to lock it at the top of the Steam sales chart for the month, and the game has stayed among the platform’s daily best sellers ever since, suggesting that strong word of mouth is still drawing new squads in.

From The Finals to ARC Raiders

Those numbers look even more impressive when you put them next to Embark’s previous hit, the free to play arena shooter The Finals. On Steam, ARC Raiders is now regularly beating The Finals historic concurrent player peaks as part of its everyday player count, meaning the younger sibling has quietly outgrown the older one. Where The Finals aims for high octane competitive matches and streamer friendly chaos, ARC Raiders slows things down with third person combat, deliberate pacing, tense extraction runs and a heavier focus on teamwork and survival. The data implies that players were eager for that flavour of shooter, something sitting halfway between hardcore survival and classic looter, and they have rewarded Embark for taking the risk.

Generative AI debate around the game

ARC Raiders is also becoming a touchstone in the growing debate around generative AI in game development. Embark has been outspoken about using AI assisted tools in parts of its pipeline, from helping artists and designers iterate more quickly to supporting audio and world building tasks, even if the final product is still very much crafted by humans. Seeing a game connected to that discussion climb into the mainstream charts gives fuel to both sides. Supporters argue that the technology can free teams to experiment more and ship richer, denser games, while critics continue to raise alarms about labour, authorship and the risk of everything starting to feel the same. Most players, of course, are simply judging what is in front of them: a polished shooter that has launched in good shape and is being updated at a steady pace.

Can it keep the momentum?

Despite the roaring start, ARC Raiders is still in what many live service veterans would call the fragile part of its life cycle. The first twelve months are where retention curves either stabilise into a loyal core community or plunge as players drift on to the next trend. It is now up to Embark to prove that the game can grow beyond its launch offering with new raids, maps, enemies, gear, seasonal events and long term progression systems that make logging in each night feel worthwhile. By the time the game reaches its one year anniversary, we will know whether it has carved out a lasting slice of the multiplayer shooter pie or simply burned brightly for a single holiday season.

Indie successes on the Steam charts

Interestingly, ARC Raiders dominance did not stop smaller projects from thriving on Steam in November. Alinea’s charts put cosy road trip sim RV There Yet? in second place for the month with around 1.9 million copies sold, a huge win for an offbeat indie about driving, camping and conversation. It is followed by the minimalist climber Peak with 1.4 million copies, and then by narrative driven thriller Dispatch at 1.1 million. The fifth spot goes to Escape from Duckov, a deliberately ridiculous parody of hardcore extraction favourite Escape from Tarkov that swaps tactical tension for slapstick chaos. Together these games paint a picture of a PC market where a headline smash like ARC Raiders can share the stage with experimental and humorous releases instead of pushing them into the margins.

Awards season versus popularity

Where ARC Raiders has not dominated, at least so far, is on the awards circuit. The game has largely been ignored in this year’s big Game of the Year debates, missing out on top category nominations at both the Golden Joystick Awards and The Game Awards. At the latter show it holds just a single nod in the best multiplayer category, while wider conversations about 2025’s defining release are centred on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, long awaited sequel Hollow Knight Silksong and the historically grounded Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. With The Game Awards ceremony set for 11 December 2025, those are the titles expected to fight it out on stage, even as ARC Raiders quietly continues to pile up sales in the background.

Looking ahead for Embark Studios

For Embark Studios, that trade off may still be a worthwhile one. Critical canon can arrive late for multiplayer first games, especially those that continue to evolve with new seasons and mechanics long after reviews have been written. Commercial success, on the other hand, buys time, staff and infrastructure, the things a studio needs in order to keep ambitious projects alive for years rather than months. If ARC Raiders can hold on to a healthy community, deepen its endgame and keep standing apart from both its own stablemate The Finals and the many other extraction shooters vying for players time, it has a real shot at being remembered as one of the defining multiplayer stories of 2025, awards or not.