Arc Raiders has been 'very profitable' for creator Embark Studios

Arc Raiders has been a hugely profitable game for Embark Studios, but we can't be sure just how much the developer's take actually is.

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With over 12 million sales across all platforms, PvPvE extraction shooter Arc Raiders is one of the most popular games on the market right now. The game sells for $40 per copy, and direct math says Arc Raiders could have made up to $496 million, or half a billion, from launch until January 2026 (this doesn't account for returns, charge-backs, and key resellers).

It's also recently been confirmed that Arc Raiders is a highly profitable game. There's reports that Arc Raiders had a budget of $75 million, and Embark won't confirm this number, but studio CEO Patrick Soderlund tells IGN that it's "not far off" and is a "ballpark" figure. In that same interview, Soderlund comments on the game's profitability and what it means for the people who made Arc Raiders.

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It's almost impossible to figure out how much money that Embark took home as a result of Arc Raider's sales. Remember that each platform-holder (Valve, Sony, Microsoft) takes their portion of each sale from the get-go. These shares are often negotiated beforehand, and if the game does well, creators have more leverage to negotiate more favorable deals.

It's also important to remember that Nexon is involved, and that company will also take a cut. So it's not as simple as taking the sale price, multiplying it by copies sold, and then subtracting an estimated budget from that value.

Soderlund's words are a rare look at optimism and hope in the games industry as it is being wracked by cost reductions and funding pullbacks, leading to significant re-organizations, layoffs, studio closures, and content cancellation.

"The game has done well for us and that we're obviously incredibly happy with the performance from a financial perspective. So, of course, it's been very profitable for us.

"What does it mean for us? Well, first and foremost, it means that... Unfortunately, it's not something that I'm happy about, but our industry has been riddled with layoffs and studio closures for the past, I would say, 24 months. For us, it means stability, long-term security.

"We can live for a long time on the money that Arc Raiders has been generating, and that does give financial security and employment stability for the people that work there.

"We're growing our studio, we're hiring people, we want to build more of Arc Raiders, we want to build more of The Finals.

"We also have two new games in development that we hope to finish someday. So for us, it's a sigh of relief, obviously, for any developer, and we're incredibly happy for that, of course, and thankful for everyone that's been supporting us by buying the game. It feels great.

"Hopefully, we can have competitive salaries, good bonuses for the people that have done all this hard work and deserve to be taken care of adequately."