Arc Raiders' popularity is beyond any doubt. While the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Battlefield 6 struggled to hit big numbers, Embark's extraction shooter managed to hold on to its impressive player base for a long time. That's not to say it didn't have issues like cheating and exploits.
However, one of the most divisive features of the game has been its PvP element. While Arc Raiders wouldn't be what it is without PvP, there have been some players hoping for a purely PvP mode. In fact, this sentiment was prevalent even in the testing stage, almost making the devs reconsider PvP entirely.
Speaking during a panel at this year's GDC, Arc Raiders production director Caio Braga revealed that the devs almost considered removing PvP (thanks, PC Gamer). The game went through a massive change from what it was first pitched as, and the devs decided to test out what it finally evolved into.
Braga revealed that after one of the tests post adding in the PvP, a "substantial negative PvP sentiment" was noticed by the developers. This caused Embark to believe that players didn't like the newly added PvP. "A lot of our initial conversation...
