When your big shooter stops being fun

Arc Raiders is now sitting pretty as one of the extraction shooter heavyweights, but it wasn't always sunshine and perfect loot drops. At a Game Developers Conference 2026 panel titled WHEN YOUR GAME ISN'T FUN, Embark Studios' production director Caio Braga walked through a moment that looked a lot like a slow-motion train wreck — and how they pulled the emergency brake.

The brutal but necessary reset

Short version: the project was struggling, the studio needed a dramatic change, and the publisher agreed to give them one more chance. That chance came with a painful consequence — Embark shrank from roughly 120 people to just 25 on the core team. Yes, almost 100 people left the project.

Braga put it plainly: they stopped trying to force the game they thought they should make and instead looked hard at the game they actually had. That meant embracing the solid bits already inside the build.

What they doubled down on

  • Extraction foundations: The team realized the game already had core systems that could support an interesting extraction shooter.
  • PvP expertise: Lots of the remaining team came from player-versus-player backgrounds, so Embark leaned into that knowledge to sharpen the gameplay.
  • A single-minded focus: Smaller team, clearer priorities, fewer cooks trying to make their own recipe.

Braga's message was equal parts grim and practical: sometimes saving a game looks like cutting nearly the whole studio and rebuilding with intent. Painful, yes. Effective, apparently also yes — the game is now doing very well months after release.

So what should other studios learn?

If your project is flailing, more faces and features won't always fix it. Honest assessment, brutal prioritization, and leaning into what already works can be the difference between another canceled title and a surprise hit. Also, when your publisher says "one more try," treat it like a very precious gift and stop buying devs lunch for a while.

Arc Raiders' comeback is a reminder that drastic choices sometimes make great games. Just maybe not without a lot of caffeine and awkward team meetings.