Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

The Algorithm of Intent

Embark Studios finally stopped playing coy about how their machines sort the digital wheat from the tactical chaff. Patrick Söderlund basically handed the Reddit theorists a victory lap by confirming Arc Raiders employs aggression-based matchmaking. This system attempts to bucket the bloodthirsty PvP enthusiasts away from the folks who actually want to scavenge in peace. If you spend your time hunting players, you get a lobby of hunters. If you’re there for the loot and the atmosphere, the algorithm tries to find you a kindred spirit who won’t shoot you in the back the second a rare component drops. It is a bold move for an extraction shooter, a genre that usually thrives on the total lack of safety, but Embark is clearly trying to manage the salt levels of its growing player base.

Extraction Etiquette and the Predator Problem

The CEO admitted the system is hardly a perfected science. It functions as a secondary layer beneath the standard skill-based parameters and party-size filters. The logic is simple: the game tracks your propensity for violence. A week ago, this invisible hand started nudging the “kill on sight” crowd toward their own private hells. It aims to address the viral chaos of retired pros dunking on casuals, but it raises questions about how the game defines intent. If you only fire in self-defense, the system might still struggle to differentiate you from the aggressor. The tension of the extraction genre relies on that unpredictability. Sanitizing the experience too much could strip the game of its actual edge, turning a tense standoff into a predictable chore.

The post Arc Raiders Aggression Matchmaking: How Embark Studios Is Sorting Looters From Killers appeared first on Game Reviews, News, Videos & More for Every Gamer – PC, PlayStation, Xbox in 2026.

This past November, Frontier Developments provided a general outline of updates coming through December 2025 and into early 2026 for Elite: Dangerous, including the intriguing arrival of operations, a repeatable multi-step encounter for up to four players that blends ship combat and FPS combat that’s slated to arrive early this year. We now have a […]

As I type this, we’re at the top of January and waiting for two events that should be happening in the WoW Classic space this month. The first is the Burning Crusade Anniversary prepatch on January 13th, which will reshape the systems of those servers and open up some more character options. But the second […]

Fresh on the heels of its 2026 roadmap, Lost Ark is preparing to unleash its first patch of the year on January 14th. In the latest dev video, the team talked up the “extreme” Thaemine raid that’s been adjusted from the Korean version to match the current playerbase. The team also encouraged players to collect […]

The fact that ARC Raiders’ use of generative AI development tools for its creation, particularly for its voice work, is a sticky wicket for many shouldn’t come as a surprise in the age of rising slop tides. Still, Embark Studios CEO Patrick Soderlund is not backing down and continues to defend the decision in an […]

Every time people discuss new things they would love to see in long-running MMORPGs, I see at least a few people speculating about things that aren’t just not happening but would fundamentally break the game. And it always makes a little twitch start up right behind my eye. It’s not that I don’t understand the […]

How do you feel about a new scenario in Once Human featuring a gigantic battle with a semi-submerged monstrous entity? The newest preview video from the game’s developer is promising that 2026 will be the “Year of the Monsters,” and not just because the developer quickly gets replaced by a light-headed monster to do the narrating. That […]

When Day of Prophecy launched in Lost Ark ahead of Thanksgiving, it was missing one key component: the race to clear the Kazeros raid that headlined it. That race is now on with today’s update. Amazon kicked off the latest Kazeros the First this morning after a four-hour downtime as players across North America and […]

On yesterday’s MOP Podcast, Justin was rattling off the immense list of MMORPGs with big launches this week, and among them was EverQuest, whose Shattering of Ro expansion formally launched last night. This is Classic EverQuest, mind you, and it has a long list of its own: Shattering of Ro is the game’s 32nd expansion, […]

The player devs behind SWG Legends dropped a new dev report over the Thanksgiving holiday with a look at what they’re working on for the largest Star Wars Galaxies rogue server. The team says it has continued its efforts on the “Bespin revitalization” project that will ideally bring life back to the game’s massive Cloud […]

Pokemon Go’s not perfect, and there’s always something to complain about, but the winter Precious Paths season is certainly looking strong in some ways. Yes, there are some very wrong turns ahead, but there’s enough good to light a fire even in this player’s cold heart. Today’s Massively on the Go is here not just to warn […]

War Thunder is looking towards the future. Or at least what it’s doing next month and somewhere down the line after that, anyway, as Gaijin Entertainment has outlined what players can expect in the December update and answered several burning questions from among its playerbase. The update due sometime in December does appear to be […]

The problems with using in-game voice chat are manifold, but one of those is that someone hearing you nearby might accidentally mistake your pleas for in-game help with pleas for help in meatspace. That appears to have been the case for one ARC Raiders fan, who had the police called on him because he was […]

Just because a game is deeply obscure doesn’t mean it’s not some gamers’ favorite title, and apparently there were a lot of people holding a torch for a specific entry in a series of Adobe Flash games known as The Last Stand. But now, fans of that game have been given the blessing of the […]

The Christmas season is officially underway in RuneScape this week as the sandbox MMORPG has brought back its Christmas Village seasonal area for another year of holiday fun, in-game goodies, and new and returning activities to take on. This year’s version of the Village features an all-new quest line involving the Queen of Snow, as […]

You may not believe this, but I didn’t really want to write this column about Final Fantasy XIV because it is entirely based on a game of telephone that is going to disappoint someone down the line. Let’s take a moment to recap. Back a couple of weeks ago, Naoki Yoshida (producer and director of FFXIV) gave […]

Space is large, strange, and untamed — and that’s just the way Wildgate likes it because it gives this extraction shooter a broad canvas in which to play. In fact, Moonshot Games just expanded this universe with Wildgate’s first major content patch, called Emergence. The Emergence update flings out a new prospector named Charlie, the […]

Last weekend we reported on the sorry state of the 1.0 release for PvPvE extraction FPS Escape from Tarkov, which has struggled under the weight of server problems, matchmaking issues, and heaps of bugs, among other things. As one might expect, this has put Battlestate Games on the back foot as the studio continues to […]