ARC Raiders Year 2 Roadmap Outlines Paused Runs & Future PvE

Expeditions are paused until early 2027, major updates are moving to a six-month rhythm, and the PvE decision lands in November.

ARC Raiders just turned one year old, and the bigger story now is where the game goes from here. The developer says it is building for the future, expeditions are getting big changes in early 2027, and another PvE update is due in November. Here is a full look at what Year 2 holds, based on what has actually been confirmed so far.

Nothing here is a rumor, since it all comes from the developer's own statements. To get there, it helps to see what has already changed. Update 2.3 disabled the vault, and anyone who bought extra vault slots got bronze statues as compensation.

After that, Embark said the fifth run of the system would last until early 2027, which puts the whole thing on pause.
The studio did give reasons. Departure windows were too tight, the rewards were not enough to justify the effort, and newer players had a hard time getting in.

Fixing that takes more than small patches, so a three-month window was never going to be enough. The system needs a full rework with a different structure. Because of that, the studio is treating this as a rebuild rather than a patch job.

This goes beyond the vault. One of the game's biggest long-term progression systems is being rebuilt as you move into Year 2. The studio has already confirmed that expeditions return early in 2027, so the wait should not drag deep into the year, and they come back with major improvements. Embark is not getting rid of the idea for good. It wants to keep iterating until it works.

If expeditions kept you away, the developer's own list is a good place to start.

The tight departure windows, the weak rewards, and how hard it was for new players to jump in. Those are the exact problems the rework is meant to address. Year 1 is what leads into all of this, because the game today is nowhere near what you first played. ARC Raiders launched on October 30, 2025, and the anniversary numbers are big.

Players have completed 6 billion rounds, and more than 14.8 billion ARC machines have been destroyed. Those are huge figures for a game that is only a year old. A lot happened in between. The game went through the pre-launch server slam, the launch itself, Stella Montis, the Northline update, Cold Snap, Flashpoint and Riven Tides.

After that came the long-term progression changes, the recent test of a mode without other players, and then Frozen Trail, which reshaped how ARC Raiders plays. The anniversary also comes with a Frozen Trail Collector set. It includes the Renzo outfit, 2,400 Raider Tokens, the premium reward pass if you do not own it already, a Dragon's Breath stencil, a retro sofa and a banjo blueprint.

That brings up what comes next. The anniversary message says the studio is already hard at work on it. ARC Raiders still gets live support, but the huge transformative releases no longer arrive monthly. They now follow the pace of Frozen Trail, since the studio changed its development strategy during Year 1. The shift came from that strategy change rather than from any slowdown.

Large updates are set to arrive roughly every six months, which is the new model going forward.

Some people have taken that to mean updates are over. They are not. Weekly and monthly updates keep coming, and they carry projects, events and live-service features that fill the gaps between the large ones. So a quiet week does not mean development has stopped. That six-month rhythm, counted from the last major release, points roughly toward spring 2027.

To be clear, that is an estimate. The studio has not announced an April update or given an exact date, so it could land earlier or later. PvE is the area where the studio has the biggest decision to make before the next major update. The recent test saw more than 30 million rounds played, and the studio described the surface-level reaction as very polarizing.

It still needs to go through the game data, community feedback and survey results, and it expects to follow up with more information in November. That does not mean the mode returns in November. It means you should get word on where things are heading with it, and that is the window the studio gave. There is some detail already.

Executive producer Aleksander Grøndal laid out three possible directions: a relaxed, chill side mode, an AI challenge mode, or a full PvE experience. Each one has very different effects on how the studio builds the future of ARC Raiders, especially when it comes to updates.

Those options matter because they decide whether the mode stays a small extra or becomes a major part of the game's future. 

The studio has to settle whether the mode comes back at all, and if it does, whether it stays a side activity, a challenge mode, or effectively a second way to play ARC Raiders. If you want the mode back, the choice comes down to a chill side mode, a tougher challenge version of ARC Raiders, or the full experience. Those are the options on the table, and the studio is likely paying close attention to which one players lean toward.

Between the giant releases, you get a layered mix of projects, events, balance changes, bug fixes and ongoing progression adjustments. That structure is how the studio plans to keep ARC Raiders active while the bigger team builds the next major release. The six-month model, in other words, does not mean quiet stretches in between.
The studio has laid out the current cadence in more detail.

Update 2.3 states that fixes return to roughly every three weeks, while store updates stay weekly. Soul Offering is a recent example of the kind of projects that sit between the big drops. Frozen Trail also set the foundation for what follows, with a Reward Pass that replaces and evolves the Raider Deck, a brand-new Outpost with updates tied to it, a revamped skill tree, new amplified weapons research, and expanded long-term progression.

It looks like the studio plans to keep handing you smaller goals through live-service beats while the larger team works on the next release of that scale. In short, those beats exist to give you something to work toward between the big releases.

Cutting out the rumors, here is what is confirmed for Year 2.

First, Embark is working on what comes next and says it has plenty planned. Second, the major update strategy continues, with large transformative releases roughly every six months. Third, the paused system returns in early 2027 with major improvements under the published plan. Fourth, the possible return of player-versus-environment content is still under evaluation.

Whether it returns at all is undecided, though more information is expected this November. Fifth, live support carries on, with projects, events, fixes roughly every three weeks as outlined in Update 2.3, and weekly store updates. Those five points are the solid ground, and everything beyond them is guesswork. 

On the unconfirmed side, there is still no word on whether a permanent version of that mode is coming, whether a new map arrives with the next major release, or whether the April window is accurate, even though it lines up. Embark has also not shared a full roadmap for the year ahead. Even so, there is enough here to see the direction ARC Raiders is heading in, just not enough to claim a complete 2027 content slate has been revealed.

Year 1 changed ARC Raiders in a big way, whether through the update cadence, the scale of releases, or how the studio approaches development. The latest major update is not the endpoint. Year 2 revolves around a few larger questions.

Whether this model can keep up momentum, what replaces and fixes the paused progression loop, where player-versus-environment content fits in, if it does at all, and what keeps you progressing between the giant releases. The next few months carry a lot of uncertainty, but that is what makes them worth watching, since answers to much of this could arrive soon.