In a sea of free-to-play games, like Marvel Rivals, Fortnite and Apex Legends, all hoping to drive people to their title without an upfront charge and hoping they stick around enough to purchase microtransactions, Arc Raiders, like Helldivers 2 before it, elected to charge players a modest upfront charge of $39.99.
Arc Raiders was snubbed for GOTY, but multiplayer games have always been judged differently
Don't get it twisted, though, there still are things available to purchase like Raider Tokens in Arc Raiders or Super Credits in Helldivers 2, but by not making the game free-to-play, in this case, Arc Raiders was able to avoid significant pain points that would've impacted players' enjoyment of the extraction shooter.
As first spotted by GamesRadar, in a new YouTube video, design director Virgil Watkins outlined just how many compromises the team at Embark Studios would've had to make in order to make Arc Raiders free-to-play and how it hurt what the team was ultimately going for.
"It’s actually, in many ways, made it drastically easier," Watkins said of going for a paid approach. "In free-to-play you need to, in some ways, make things a little stickier than...
