January has come and gone, but ARC Raiders' top-seller status hasn't changed.
Just in case you thought the ARC Raiders hype train might be slowing down, allow me to pass along the news that it's still cruising along. It may now be over three full months since Embark Studios' PvPvE extraction shooter launched at the end of October, but the game still remains the hottest title in the industry.
That news comes from the latest monthly report from the gaming industry research firm Alinea Analytics, which estimates that ARC Raiders sold 3.2 million copies in January — 1.5 million on Steam, and 1.7 million across Xbox Series X|S and PS5 — making it the best-selling game for the third consecutive month.
Those numbers have also pushed the game's lifetime performance past two gigantic milestones: the sale of over 15 million copies in total across all platforms, and a whopping gross revenue of $500 million and counting. Those are huge numbers, and quantify just how remarkably successful ARC Raiders has been thus far.
Its dominant performance is also reflected in player engagement metrics; at the time of writing, the multiplayer shooter maintains an average concurrent player count of anywhere between roughly 250K and 400K depending on time-of-day according to SteamDB data. That's nearly on par with its launch numbers, and makes it the third most-played Steam game currently, above PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS and below only Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2.
Notably, Alinea Analytics reports that ARC Raiders reached 10 million monthly active users (MAUs) in January across its platforms, too, which is an 8% increase over December's results and the holidays. Granted, these are estimates, but overall, it's clear that the game's popularity hasn't waned whatsoever.
That's in contrast to Battlefield 6, which also arrived in October and was the best-selling game of 2025, but has seen a noticeably steep decline in recent weeks. Indeed, while Electronic Arts and Battlefield Studios' new bombastic large-scale multiplayer FPS has dropped roughly 85% of its launch player count, ARC Raiders has barely lost any of its players at all.
As for why? Ultimately, Embark has delivered its fans a consistent stream of updates every week or two that introduce new content, make important tweaks, and fix bugs. Updates for Battlefield 6, on the other hand, have been rather slow and have introduced bugs and performance issues of their own, to the point where Season 2 has been delayed to February 17 for extra polishing.
Battlefield 6's post-launch content hasn't exactly been received well, either. I maintain that the Eastwood map was awesome, but Blackwell Fields was terrible, and players are frustrated with the lack of larger maps, absence of loadout options for jets, and more.
A look at Steam's Top Sellers chart shows that Battlefield 6 is no longer anywhere near the top, while ARC Raiders is still a fierce performer. Right now, it's the second best-selling paid game on the list, second only to Helldivers 2 which just got a huge update. I don't doubt it'll be back in first place soon, though.
It's impossible to say how long we'll see ARC Raiders dominate like this, especially with its direct competitor Marathon launching in March. But one thing that's clear is that the extraction shooter is one of the biggest recent success stories in all of gaming, and will likely keep players hooked for many months to come.
Do you play ARC Raiders? If you haven't, do you plan to at some point, or are you not very interested? What are your overall thoughts on the game? Let me know in the comments.
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Posted Wednesday 4 February 2026 at 12:10 pm AEST (my time).
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