Embark Studios Found the ARC Raiders and Marathon Playtest Overlap Surprisingly Beneficial

When two highly anticipated shooters – ARC Raiders and Marathon – happened to run playtests at the same time earlier this year, fans thought it was an odd coincidence. But according to Embark Studios technical director Virgil Watkins, that overlap turned out to be unexpectedly valuable.

In fact, it gave Embark a rare, real-world benchmark against another major title in the same genre – something developers rarely get the chance to experience.

Speaking to PC Gamer, Watkins explained that the timing wasn’t planned. “It was very coincidental that they had their test around the same time we did,” he said. “None of us expected it. But it was actually a great A/B test – we could directly compare how each of our design decisions landed with players.” While Watkins didn’t detail specific differences, the subtext was clear: both studios were building extraction shooters, and both had plenty to learn from observing player reactions to the other’s experiment.

The ARC Raiders team had just come off their massive Server Slam Test held from October 17–19, during which the game opened its doors to all players on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. By the end of the weekend, the numbers spoke for themselves – more than 189,000 concurrent players on Steam alone. For a technical test, that’s an impressive figure, suggesting the game’s core loop already has strong traction among players eager for a fresh extraction experience.

However, as Watkins admitted, the real insights sometimes come from watching how others stumble or succeed. Marathon’s test gave Embark Studios a mirror of sorts – showing what worked in a similar framework, what didn’t, and how different philosophies could yield entirely different player sentiments. He described the experience as both humbling and enlightening. “It’s always interesting to see how something plays out in another context,” he noted. “Things that might fail in one game can thrive in another depending on how the systems connect.”

Unlike Embark’s free-to-play arena shooter The Finals, ARC Raiders is expected to launch as a premium title. That means it won’t have the immediate hook of a zero-cost entry, but it could benefit from tighter balancing, a more curated player base, and a refined progression system. The successful stress test also proved that Embark’s servers – powered by its proprietary tech stack – can handle massive traffic without meltdown, a feat that even established studios occasionally struggle to achieve.

Meanwhile, Bungie’s Marathon is still shrouded in mystery. The studio plans a closed, NDA-bound test later this month, and while excitement remains high, its direction feels far less certain than ARC Raiders’. Some players remain skeptical of Bungie’s new creative path, especially after Destiny’s uneven post-launch years. But the industry is watching closely – if both titles land, the extraction shooter genre could experience its biggest shakeup since Escape from Tarkov.

In the end, what started as an accidental overlap became an opportunity for Embark Studios to refine, compare, and evolve. For players, it’s proof that even coincidences can lead to better games – as long as developers are willing to learn from one another.