ARC Raiders Takes Aim at Fortnite, Joins up with Battlefield 6

The team behind the already extremely popular new extraction shooter ARC Raiders have revealed that they’re putting their foot down and joining Battlefield 6’s stance against both Call of Duty and Fortnite, in their combined war against “novelty” cosmetic items.

ARC Raiders, the PvPvE shooter developed and published by Embark Studios, finally dropped on Steam, Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X, and PlayStation 5 yesterday, and it's already shot up to the top of Steam's charts.

As of writing, it currently has a 90 percent positive rating on the platform, it's ranked at #1 in Steam's top sellers charts, and it's already reached an all-time peak of 370,000+ players.

It’s pretty fair to say things are going well for the game, but that doesn’t mean the community doesn’t have any concerns regarding additional content updates.

However, the design director for ARC Raiders, Virgil Watkins, has already put at least one of those concerns to rest, as it seems they’re joining Battlefield 6 in taking aim at the sillier skins found in the likes of Fortnite and Call of Duty.

Official ARC Raiders promo image of someone facing down a spider mech, Embark Studios

In a recent interview with PCGamesN, Watkins explained that the game’s “visual identity” was extremely important to the team and that nothing akin to a full-blown “Santa Claus” cosmetic would find its way into the game in the future.

“I think it was said a little while ago in a meeting [that] we would never, say, make a Santa Claus outfit… But we may make something that is of our own tone and our own aesthetic that evokes Santa Claus. That’s not even a statement that we will have a Santa Claus outfit, but I think that’s kind of the line you can draw”, Watkins revealed.

“We’re pretty protective of making sure that anything that goes into the game fits within the visual identity, fits within the tone, fits within the setting. I think because so much of our game is strong around that element, it would be really unfortunate to upset that by injecting, I don’t know, a T-Rex costume running around suddenly – I don’t think the novelty is worth the trade.”

These sentiments echo similar comments made by Battlefield 6’s design director Shashank Uchil during their interview with DBLTAP, who specifically made fun of Call of Duty’s “Nicki Minaj” crossover skin and stated that silly cosmetics of a similar variety would never make their way into the game.

It’s pretty clear that both dev teams are trying to distance themselves from the likes of Call of Duty as much as possible, although, personally, I find that to be slightly funny considering that, as of right now, ARC Raiders’ and Battlefield 6’s main competition is each other.

Of course, that’s all set to change once Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 drops later next month, so we’ll find out which shooter ends up on top in the long run then.

• ARC Raiders Free Alternative Game Lands This Week on Consoles and PC
• Battlefield 6 Loses 85% of Playerbase, ARC Raiders Reigns Supreme
• ARC Raiders is Here to Stay, Huge Battlefield 6 and Black Ops 7 Realisation
• Battlefield 6 Has Been Left Out to Dry, Here's Why ARC Raiders Succeeded Where It Failed