On the 11th, Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderlund joined Nexon’s conference call and laid out the early success factors behind the studio’s new release, “ARC Raiders.”

“ARC Raiders” has surpassed 4 million units sold worldwide shortly after launch and exceeded 700,000 concurrent users across PC and consoles, holding the No. 1 spot on Steam’s global bestseller chart. Söderlund stressed that this explosive response wasn’t a stroke of luck but the result of hard-won lessons and a clear strategy.

Lessons on User Retention Learned from “THE FINALS”

Söderlund pointed to his experience with the previous title, “THE FINALS,” as the key to this success. Although “THE FINALS” logged 20 million downloads on the strength of its compelling IP and innovation at launch, he candidly admitted that “we didn’t have enough content to keep players deeply engaged over time.” Back then, Embark knew its retention metrics fell short but, as he recalled, “we didn’t know how to get the ‘right’ numbers.”

Those lessons carried directly into the development of “ARC Raiders.” Söderlund stated flatly that “what we learned from ‘THE FINALS’ paved the way for ‘ARC Raiders’ to succeed.” As a result, “ARC Raiders” is posting user retention “among the highest that Nexon has ever seen,” which he emphasized as proof that the team “worked hard to make sure we had features that truly support retention.”

A Strategy to “Popularize” a Hardcore Genre

The success of “ARC Raiders” started from a clear hypothesis. Söderlund said the team drew inspiration from hardcore extraction titles such as “Escape from Tarkov.”

Their core hypothesis: “We can take the extraction genre—seen as very difficult and hardcore—make it more accessible and easier to play, and turn it into a mainstream product.” “ARC Raiders” has borne out that hypothesis, winning over both core players and newcomers.

“Peak CCU 10 Days After Launch”: Engagement Proven by the Data

The triumph of “ARC Raiders” isn’t just a launch-day bump. Söderlund, reiterating the game’s strong retention, said he was “quite surprised by how the game is retaining players.”

The most striking data point: peak concurrent users (CCU) was recorded on the Sunday 10 days after release. That’s a powerful indicator that players aren’t merely purchasing the game—they’re “playing a lot and staying inside the game.”

A Live Service That Won’t Rest on Its Laurels

Embark has no plans to coast on this momentum. Söderlund said the same team that built “ARC Raiders” will continue supporting it and that “we may even grow the team rather than scale it down to deliver more frequent updates.” Two to three patches have already gone out, with meaningful content updates—new weapons, enemies, maps, quests—set to follow.

He added that the studio will keep a close eye on the situation and “if we see a decline, we’ll respond systematically and quickly—just as we did with ‘THE FINALS’—and do our utmost to cure that decline.” Having designed success by learning from “THE FINALS,” Embark now intends to apply those crisis-response lessons to sustain it.

Meanwhile, Nexon CFO Shiro Uemura said, “Cumulative sales of ‘ARC Raiders’ in Q4 are likely to be around 5 million units, and could reach up to 5.5 million.”

This article was translated from the original that appeared on INVEN.