ARC Raiders Goes Free for Four Days as Its Biggest Update Arrives

Starting Thursday, ARC Raiders will open its full extraction shooter to new players for four days, with Embark Studios making the game temporarily free across Steam, PlayStation and Xbox to coincide with the launch of its biggest update yet.

The free-play period begins at 09:00 UTC on 8 October and ends at 08:00 UTC on 12 October. For UK players, that works out at 10am BST on Thursday through 9am BST on Monday.

This is temporary access rather than a free-to-keep giveaway. Once the event finishes, players will need to purchase ARC Raiders to continue playing.

Embark is not limiting newcomers to a special trial build either. Its official free-play announcement confirms that the full ARC Raiders game will be available throughout the event.

That normally carries a £34.99 standard price on the UK PlayStation Store, with the same £34.99 list price used on Xbox before any temporary discounts.

The timing is particularly good because Frozen Trail arrives on the same day.

Pendola Pass is a completely new map set beyond the mountains surrounding the Rust Belt, where Raiders discover an old Italian village and former Exodus transport hub dominated by the wreckage of a fallen Emperor.

The area includes an abandoned supermarket, town square, observatory and buried train depot, while sudden Flash Freezes introduce another environmental threat alongside rival Raiders and ARC machines.

New players will not necessarily have to work through the normal unlock path before seeing it.

Embark says anyone joining during the free period can access Pendola Pass immediately if they group with another player who has already unlocked the map. That means existing players can effectively take newcomers straight into Frozen Trail’s headline location.

I think that is one of the smartest parts of the free weekend. Giving somebody access to the whole game would mean considerably less if the newest map remained locked behind several days of progression during a four-day trial.

Pendola Pass also introduces three new ARC threats.

The Bully aggressively closes distance and refuses to give ground, while the Skulker works very differently by staying around the edges of a player’s vision before exploiting distractions to attack.

The Hydra is a three-section autonomous turret capable of threatening an entire squad and is encountered aboard the Frigate.

The Frigate itself is something larger.

Sent in response to the fallen Emperor, the enormous airborne ARC vessel can be boarded by Raiders, who then navigate its internal passages, unlock routes and fight machines while other players compete for the same rewards. Embark describes it as a high-level challenge where cooperation and PvP can collide hundreds of feet above the ground.

Frozen Trail goes well beyond a new map and enemies.

The new Outpost expands the existing Raider Den concept with a customisable surface base where players can install modules, place furniture and use a Research Workstation.

That workstation also drives the new Amplified Weapons system. Fifteen existing weapons initially gain access to a fifth quality level with branching upgrades capable of substantially changing how they behave, including examples such as a fully automatic Burletta, scoped Renegade and Rattler fitted with incendiary ammunition and a 64-round magazine.

Two completely new guns arrive alongside it. The Stiletto is a light-ammo battle rifle intended as an accessible long-range alternative to the Renegade, while the heavy-ammo Bantam revolver includes a dedicated hip-fire mechanic.

Traversal changes too.

A Grappling Hook lets Raiders climb, abseil and swing across gaps, while the Tether Launcher can connect targets to fixed points or even attach another Raider to an ARC machine. The Yank Grenade takes the same idea and violently pulls nearby targets when it detonates.

There is even a functioning photography gadget with zoom, aperture control, manual and automatic focus and a selfie mode. Images taken with it are stored in the Codex.

Frozen Trail also replaces the existing Raider Deck progression structure with Reward Passes.

The Free Pass contains rewards earned through Feats, including 200 Raider Tokens, five outfits, gameplay items and 20 additional cosmetics. A Premium Pass adds exclusive variations, weapon stencils, hairstyles and additional Raider Tokens, while a free Legacy Pass combines previous Raider Deck rewards so existing progress is not simply discarded.

Existing players do have one deadline to remember before the update arrives: Cred is being retired on 8 October. Any unspent Cred disappears when Frozen Trail launches, although rewards already claimed remain on the account.

The size of the update reflects a development change Embark made earlier this year.

Rather than continuing with major monthly updates, the studio announced in May that ARC Raiders would move towards two larger major updates each year, supported by smaller live updates, balance fixes, events and store releases in between. Frozen Trail is the first major example of that slower approach and has been described by Embark as the largest update since launch.

There is another major experiment immediately afterwards, but free-weekend players will narrowly miss it unless they buy the game.

From 13 to 20 October, Embark is testing a dedicated PvE matchmaking option that lets players choose between traditional PvPvE raids and a co-operative experience focused on fighting ARC without hostile player encounters. The free-play period ends on 12 October, one day before that test begins.

Interestingly, that PvE test takes ARC Raiders closer to its original concept. Embark says development began around seven years ago as a raid-based PvE co-op game before the project was reworked into the PvPvE extraction shooter eventually released in October 2025.

The studio has also tightened its anti-cheat policies shortly before opening the doors to a potentially much larger temporary player base.

Permanent bans are now standard for accounts caught using known cheat software, while Embark has expanded restrictions against linked accounts and hardware. Its recent measures against pre-arranged solo queue teaming reportedly cut players engaging in that behaviour by 85%, reducing affected raids from roughly one in 50 to one in 300.

ARC Raiders has maintained a sizeable audience since its 30 October 2025 launch. SteamDB recently recorded more than 400,000 user reviews and an all-time Steam peak of almost 482,000 concurrent players, while the game won the Multiplayer award at the 2026 BAFTA Games Awards.

One detail Embark has not confirmed in its free-play announcement is whether progression earned between 8 and 12 October will carry across if a player subsequently buys the game. I would not assume that behaviour until Embark explicitly clarifies it.

The free access is also specifically announced for Steam, Xbox and PlayStation. ARC Raiders is normally available through the Epic Games Store and GeForce NOW as well, but those platforms are not included in Embark’s free-weekend announcement.

For anyone who has been curious about ARC Raiders but unwilling to buy into an extraction shooter without trying it first, this is effectively the best possible test window: the complete game, its largest update so far and almost four days to find out whether making it back to Speranza with your loot is worth £34.99.