ARC Raiders Boss Slams AI Critics, 'Take a Step Back'

ARC Raiders leader Patrick Söderlund has responded to critics who have slammed the game for its use of generative AI.

ARC Raiders has proven itself to be a tremendous success over the past few months, maintaining hundreds of thousands of concurrent players each day since its launch in October 2025.

It turns out that having a steady stream of free content, along with fun multiplayer gameplay and no pressure to grind makes for an excellent combination.

However, ARC Raiders has also seen its critics in the months since launch, with particular attention drawn to claims it uses generative AI to generate new lines by its voice cast.

Embark Studios, the developer of ARC Raiders, responded to these claims by clarifying that voice actors were hired to read lines for the game, but that a “text-to-speech” function was trained on these voice actors to create new lines without getting them back into the recording booth.

The result is… less than savoury. The final lines as they appear in-game don’t sound great, with the performance feeling rather stunted. Many players feel these lines would be better if performed by an actual human, rather than a machine that spits out data that may, or may not, be correct.

ARC Raiders, Embark Studios

Embark Studios Responds To Critics Of Its Use Of AI

In an interview with GamesBeat, Embark’s Patrick Söderlund clarified his stance on the studio’s use of AI.

“We don’t use AI to not have to hire people or replace people or job groups or voice actors,” Söderlund told GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi.

“People have to take a step back and understand what it is and how it can be a big help to developers and be a tremendous benefit to players.

"I realize it is an intricate subject and discussion.”

However, Söderlund does not go into detail about these “tremendous benefits” are, nor does it seem like this pushback from AI critics has affected the popularity of the game.

As it stands, ARC Raiders has around 150,000 concurrent players on Steam at the time of writing, much higher than Call of Duty’s 22,000 concurrent player count and Battlefield 6’s 41,000 concurrent players.

However, it’s worth noting that in both of those cases, player counts are probably going to be at their weakest on Steam.

Call of Duty is most popular on console, particularly on PlayStation 5 and Xbox via Xbox Game Pass. Meanwhile, Battlefield 6 on PC will be played by most people via the EA App.