The attack on the Arc Raiders servers has begun. The highly anticipated third-person shooter was only playable for about two hours (at the time of writing), but the number of concurrent players was already approaching 100,000.
This server tournament is the last chance for interested players to check out the game before it launches on October 30th, after which you'll have to purchase the game for £30.99 / $39.99 / €39.99. The purpose of this test, as the name suggests, is to load the servers as much as possible before the full version is released.
Arc Raiders already held public testing back in April. It's hard to explain how popular the test has been given its multi-platform availability. Instead, it might be better to compare today's weekend playtest to recent open beta tests for other games.
Compare this with Dune: Awakening. This game had a large presence on Steam during its open beta. quickly reaching approximately 150,000 concurrent users on Steam on opening day.. Arc Raiders appears to be on track to surpass the Dune: Awakening set, which is a good indication of its popularity.
Of course, it's unfair to compare Arc Raiders to the latest beta version of the game. Battlefield 6, which had 250,000 players waiting play open beta on all platforms. Right now, no one expects Arc Raiders to reach this level of popularity during this weekend's playtest, but a look at where it lands this weekend between Dune: Awakening and Battlefield 6 could give an idea of its potential popularity when it goes premium.
These are, of course, different game genres that need to be taken into account. Arc Raiders' main competitors as a loot game are probably Escape From Tarkov. which will be released on Steam in Novemberand maybe Marathon, although this remains shelved indefinitely due to plagiarism dispute.
Either way, this weekend is your last chance to check out Arc Raiders before it launches in full later this month. If you do join or have played it before, take a look below and let us know what you think. Arc Raiders game test this weekend it can be played on PC via Steam and Epic, Xbox and PS5. Nothing you collect will carry over to the full game, so just jump in and have a good time.