Destiny 2 is once again one of the top 10 best-selling games on Steam in the United States.
Big push for Destiny 2 on Steam today! It was sitting at #13 in the US and #37 globally yesterday, but shot up to #7 in the US and #29 globally this morning.
Anyone's excited?
Hey there, Raiders!
Update 1.47.0 is underway, bringing two new color variants for the Riposta Set, an update on Fair Play & a few more fixes & improvements. A download is required, so make sure you do that before loading back in.
In case you missed it, we’ll be holding a First Look at Frozen Trail and what’s coming with the update tomorrow! On September 23rd, at 10am PDT (7pm CEST), tune in for an extended peek at our biggest update yet.
Can’t wait to hear what you think! We’ve got more planned ahead of October 8th, stay tuned.
While our dev team is hard at work putting the finishing touches on Frozen Trail, our Anti-Cheat team is making constant updates and improvements across the board to our Fair Play initiatives.
When it comes to economy-related manipulation, there have been several ban waves for accounts we detected exhibiting "bot-like" behavior. We’ll continue to track and refine our detection to cover broader types of suspect behavior (such as XP farming) in the future, as well. We also continue sanctioning abnormally high-value item transfers. Item duplication is also on our minds, and we’re seeing positive outcomes following this summer’s ongoing improvements on that front.
We are constantly working on ways to prevent serial cheaters and discourage them from returning. Currently, we're strengthening our policies when it comes to shared licenses and how those are restricted when an account is sanctioned. In practice, this will make it harder for cheaters who were detected on one account to purchase another. Keeping track of a cheater's behavior before and after receiving a sanction helps us anticipate it and act faster in the future.
Previously, we mentioned the speed of action against unfair play is important to us. To that end, we have been improving our detection systems and we are extending first-strike permanent bans. This allows us to catch offenders much quicker with a very high degree of confidence.
While we keep improving and expanding the ways we keep Topside fair, we want to thank you for helping us do that by reporting players and sharing any illicit behavior with us.
Heads up! After October 8th, the inbox message that contains the community-made Rubber Ducks will no longer be sent out. Make sure to log in and claim them before that deadline.
Wouldn’t wanna miss out on those awesome ducks!
Make sure to finish up your Expedition project and sign up for Departure before September 29th 10am CEST/8am UTC/1am PT.
There is no Last Call this time around, so be mindful of that!
We know that a few of you are having issues with the Departure screen. If you are experiencing issues confirming your sign-up for departure, please reach out to support as soon as possible. You can do so here.
See you soon!
//Raz
>As we look ahead to Frozen Trail and a rework to Raider Decks, we’ll be making changes to the Cred currency. It will remain usable until October 8, so be sure to use any remaining Cred before then.
>We are retiring Cred as a currency, as we’ll be introducing a more expansive reward system launching with the Frozen Trail Update. All existing Raider Deck rewards will also be available in the new system. You will keep any rewards you have already claimed at the time of the update.
>Any Cred remaining on your account will expire with the Frozen Trail update, so please be sure to spend your Cred with Shani or on any remaining Raider Deck rewards.
Raiders!
Store Update 1.44.0 is going live right now with the stunning Static Set. No restart needed!
Gamescom is officially behind us, so Raz and I are settling back into our regular schedule. Meeting so many of you at the booth was honestly the highlight, thanks for coming by!
See you Topside,
//Ossen
August 18, 2026
Update 1.42.0 is going live right now and with it a number of fixes, a second part of the Phantom Targets event with the Anomalia Outfit, a new Player Project, improved map condition scheduling, and new Twitch drops.
Thanks to the assistance of many Raiders, Shani finally pinpointed the source of the phantom targets: erratic Wasps. These ARC units are exhibiting behavior she’s never seen before: emitting strange noises, flying in irregular patterns, and carrying unidentifiable tech. They’re all swarming towards one location. She needs further assistance to understand what’s waiting for them there.
We have been working to make sure that the way we schedule Map Conditions is aligned with your playing habits. To that end, we’re introducing Regional Map Condition Scheduling. Starting with 1.42.0, Map Conditions will have their schedule offset based on regions, instead of a single, global schedule.
This means that the schedule will shift to fit specific regions' peak hours to better match your experience. This way, it’ll be less likely to miss out on a map condition regardless of where you are.
Don’t hesitate to tell us how Regional Map Condition schedules are working by chatting with us on our Discord! We’re eager to see what everyone’s experience is like and make adjustments accordingly.
Note: we will update the Map Condition tracker on the website to reflect this change soon. For now, we are aware the information on the website may not reflect the in-game conditions.
It’s time to look at what’s been going on in the realm of Fair Play since our last chat a few weeks back. Some new (and some recurring) topics have crossed our path since then, and we wanted to reassure you that keeping Topside safe against cheaters and exploits is a top priority for us, and will continue to be so.
When we see reports of third party software being used to gain an advantage of any kind, in-game or at account level, we investigate. The first and most important step is to verify the validity of the report and whether or not the software actually does what it claims to do. A lot of the time, claims are just that, and interacting with this kind of software carries a large amount of risk.
Be aware that downloading unverified and unofficial software can put more than just your account at risk. Beyond getting banned and losing access to the game, your data and personal information could be exposed.
Remember that your account is only as secure as its weakest link. In order to protect your account, your purchases and progression, we strongly recommend making sure 2FA or passkeys are enabled on all external accounts connected to your Embark ID. Oh, and never share your credentials with anyone. No matter how many ducks they offer.
Over the past few weeks, we have been making several improvements alongside Anybrain and Denuvo Anti-Cheat. This has resulted in swift action being taken against a large number of accounts that were using recently popularized cheating software.
There is also the matter of ensuring permanent sanctions for serial, blatant cheaters. We continue working on methods that make it more difficult for new accounts to be obtained and that discourage cheaters from returning.
There have been compounding improvements in our ability to also detect accounts that participated in what we classify as “economy exploits”, which means we can more quickly sanction offenders. These types of sanctions have been ongoing.
Additionally, we have several simultaneous initiatives that are meant to address teaming and general matchmaking abuse. We know how important having a consistently good experience is, and that in certain regions or at certain times, it’s easier to run into groups of players that try to force their way into lobbies and engage in griefing. We’ll share more when all of these are ready.
And that’s, of course, not all. We’ll keep building up all of the initiatives we mentioned and we’ll do our best to make sure that your experiences across the Rust Belt are fun, thrilling, and most importantly fair.
Last Thursday, the 3 finalists of the Rubber Duck Design Contest were selected via popular vote on our Discord. We have since begun working on bringing the ducks into the game, and we will add them in a future update!
Soon enough, you’ll be able to fill your Raider Den with ducks made by the super-talented gekko.rar, im_AshCheeks and nassguhl.
See you Topside,
//Ossen & Raz
Greetings Raiders!
Live Update 1.39.0 is going out right now, bringing various game fixes, changes & additional updates to the Matchmaking System. The Seeker & Wolfpack should no longer deal inconsistent damage and trinkets previously added in 1.33.0 can now stack! Additionally, you can find the new Dweller Outfit in the store.
Over the past months, improving matchmaking has been one of our top priorities. We’ve introduced various adjustments and improvements based on your feedback & requests.
Since our Notes on The Matchmaking System, one change has stood out with the community: defending yourself is no longer treated the same as starting a fight. It meant self-defense still counted toward your playstyle estimate, but with much less weight than starting a fight. Your feedback was positive, and many of you have asked us to take it further.
The most common follow-up request we've seen is to remove the impact of Defensive PvP entirely - going from reduced weight to none at all. Starting now, we're testing exactly that. During the test, only the fights you choose to start will influence your playstyle estimate, and defending yourself won't affect it at all.
So what counts as starting a fight, and what counts as defending yourself? Here's how the system reads an encounter:
Over the coming weeks we'll monitor our matchmaking metrics, watch how PvP develops Topside, and gather your feedback.
Two earlier changes are also still live: the Solo, Duo, and Trio matchmaking tracking from 1.36.0 and the matchmaking optimization adjustments from 1.38.0. We're keeping a close watch on how both perform, but telemetry only tells us half the story - to get the full picture, we need to hear how your matches actually feel.
The matchmaking survey covers all of this, so take a minute to fill it out - your input is the other half, and it's what turns our data into better decisions. Thank you, Raiders!
Raiders & Contestants, don’t forget! You’ve got until July 30th at 3PM CEST to complete the required Contracts in THE FINALS and earn the Azimuth outfit & the Archaeologist Backpack bundle in ARC Raiders.
Afterwards, we’re back to the Rust Belt! You’ll be able to earn the Azimuth bundle in THE FINALS by heading Topside and playing ARC Raiders.
See you Topside,
//Raz
and The ARC Raiders Team
Howdy Raiders!
Store Update 1.38.0 is going live right now on all platforms. We’re bringing two new colors for the Torpedo set (Camo & Black), which you will receive automatically if you own the outfit. Same as before, you do not need to restart the game.
The Expedition Departure is happening as we speak. Good luck to everyone getting a fresh start. For those of you on your Fourth Expedition, we want to know which Mystery Rewards you’ve received!
Need a reminder on how the Expedition works and what to expect? Here's our latest Expedition article.
We've heard your feedback on matchmaking. It works well most of the time, but there is room for improvement — especially during low-population hours, in certain regions, or in specific map conditions. We’re working to improve those cases.
Starting today, we'll be testing adjustments to our matchmaking algorithm aimed at improving the quality of your matches. One thing to note: the algorithm may take a little longer to find a match, since it's now working harder to find you a better one.
What does this mean for you? You should run into squads that match your playstyle and squad size even more consistently, making for more fair and enjoyable raids.
As always, we'll be keeping a close eye on our matchmaking metrics and your feedback. We'll review these adjustments shortly and share where things land. Thanks for helping us make the matchmaking experience better for everyone.
For more details on how our matchmaking system works, check out our earlier deep-dive.
See you Topside,
//Raz
Store Update 1.37.0 is going live right now on all platforms with two new colour variants for the Driftcoat outfit - black/green and red. You will get them automatically if you already own the skin, no restart required.
We have seen your feedback about the Seeker Grenade feeling weaker since last week’s update and we have been investigating the issue. We noticed an unintended effect from a collision change on the projectiles and the team is working on a fix - we will let you know as soon as it’s ready.
We have also been looking into your reports of being automatically signed up for Departure after completing the “Deal Damage” challenge (reaching 100,000 damage dealt). This is unintentional, and we’re working on a fix.
Following last week's fix for the duplication glitch, we've been banning accounts that gained a significant advantage from exploiting it. That effort continues this week, similarly to how we handled it in February:
Players who deliberately exploited the glitch but didn't gain a major advantage will not be suspended. And if you simply received a few items from someone who was duping, without knowingly exploiting the glitch yourself, you may receive a warning.
Our goal is to only take action against those who significantly and deliberately abused the exploit, not to catch players who were incidentally affected.
Thank you to everyone who reported the issue and continued to play according to the rules.
See you Topside,
//Ossen
Raiders!
There are two new colour variants (Blue Frost and Camo) for the Bogwalker Set available at the shop now. If you already own the set, you will get them automatically.
If you're almost done with the Expedition requirements but lack a Sirena Dorata ship model or two, good news! Ermal has some in stock this week (offers go live at 4AM PDT / 1 PM CEST).
We have completed our rollout of Denuvo Anti-Cheat to all players. We’re keeping a close eye on its impact and performance. We are working on a more extensive update on our efforts towards fair play, which we’ll share as soon as it’s ready.
See you Topside,
//Ossen
Statistics right now:
>This post will be updated regularly. Stay Tuned.
🔴 LIVE
KEEP IT UP, GUARDIANS!
>This post will be updated regularly. Stay Tuned.
>This just proves that listening to player's feedback translates into real engagement. Plain and simple.
Destiny 2's Steam concurrent player count recently surged past 20,000, marking its highest peak in months. This noticeable spike was driven directly by community engagement with the latest Dev Insights article and This Week in Destiny (TWID) blog updates.
A mysterious merchant has been spotted scoping out his pitch, opening up new ways for Raiders to trade high-value loot for exclusive rewards. Why not pay him a visit?
Live update 1.29 lands tomorrow with:
▫️ a new Trader
▫️ Fresh cosmetics
▫️ and more
https://x.com/arcraidersgame/status/2056404453235081463?s=46
According to Nexon Fiscal 2026 First Quarter Results Summary and Recent Highlights:
>The October "Frozen Trail" update, which Embark Studios is developing, will add a lot of free content, including new maps, as well as paid content.
>This update adds long-term gameplay content and significantly revamps the game experience itself, bringing back existing players and acquiring new players.
It is worth noting that: "ARC Raiders®": The cumulative number of units sold to date has exceeded 16 million.
We're shifting to bigger and better game updates, twice a year. Here's everything you need to know.
Hi Raiders,
ARC Raiders has grown far beyond anything we imagined at launch, and every day we see players continuing to shape life in the Rust Belt in ways that inspire us as developers. With that in mind, we want to talk about how we’re changing our update cadence moving forward.
We're changing how we update the game.
When ARC Raiders launched, we planned to offer monthly content updates. The intention was to keep you all engaged, to ensure the game always felt fresh, and to give you reasons to keep braving topside. But once the game was in players' hands, we saw that the kind of long-term experience we want to create for ARC Raiders requires more transformative updates.
Over time, we’ve found that the pressure of a monthly cycle limits how impactful these updates can be. You feel it, and we feel it too. Running at that pace isn't sustainable, or compatible with the bigger ambitions we have for this game.
Major updates will come twice a year.
Going forward, we've made the decision to release major updates twice a year – larger in scale, more impactful, with the goal to genuinely change how you play the game. Don’t worry, a dedicated live service team will continue running ARC Raiders day-to-day: regular live updates, plus balance fixes, bug fixes, store updates, and player events aren't going anywhere.
This additional development space allows us to invest more deeply in the health of ARC Raiders, from progression and economy balancing to fair play and anti-cheat efforts. We know these are foundational to the experience, especially in a game where every encounter and extraction matters.
Our next major update lands in October, and it's the largest we've released since launch. This isn't just about volume, it's designed to address the broader questions the community has been asking. Here's a taste of what's coming:
It’s important to understand, we're not just stacking new content on top of the existing experience. We're refining core systems to support a more meaningful long-term experience – one you genuinely want to keep returning to. Frozen Trail is just the beginning of where we want to take ARC Raiders, and we’ll share more in the coming months.
Next week, we’re introducing a fresh mechanic designed for late-game players: a new Trader from a nomadic tribe of surface-dwellers.
Many of you have invested a lot in the game, and there’s a few common problems that we keep hearing about:
The new Trader unlocks at level 25, and he offers unique rewards, rare items, and cosmetics in exchange for your high-value items. He will take items off your hands in return for these weekly rotating rewards, but he may sometimes ask you to go and find specific rare items to trade.
The new Trader also offers two perks in exchange for high-value items:
This is just one part of a broader set of improvements arriving later this year.
One thing that has become increasingly clear since launch is how important progression and player goals are to the ARC Raiders experience. If you love ARC Raiders, you want more reasons to keep returning to the Rust Belt – and we want to build systems that continue evolving alongside the game.
Some of the progression improvements we want to implement simply need more development time that we haven't been able to address properly while running on a monthly cycle. Moving to larger updates allows us to spend more time refining the systems players engage with the most.
We’re working to deepen progression across multiple areas of ARC Raiders, while continuing to expand how players shape and personalize their Raider. We’re also investing more into features like Trials so they remain reliably fun to engage with, not a grind. We’re also putting effort into making the Expedition Project more rewarding – and less punishing – to pursue. This is an ongoing part of ARC Raiders’ evolution, and you’ll start seeing the first steps of that very soon.
It’s important to us that players understand something about where our collective ‘Embark brain’ is at: our ambitions go far beyond what players have seen so far. We want to go further in showing you the wider universe of ARC Raiders.
We think about ARC Raiders as an experience that should continue expanding over time, and right now we’re still early in that journey. The bi-annual cadence gives us the opportunity to develop to build future updates with more intention, ensuring that gameplay, progression, narrative, and the world itself all move forward together.
Right now, Raiders are facing an escalating ARC threat, and the society in Speranza may feel helpless against it. But Raiders aren’t built to stay on the back foot: the goal has always been bigger than survival – it’s about one day reclaiming the surface.
Frozen Trail will start to progress this goal and expose elements of this challenge, but it is really just the beginning. We aim to constantly shift the paradigm that Raiders operate under so you feel the effects of your actions and perseverance against ARC.
The Rust Belt is nothing without the Raiders who fill it with life every single day. We understand that this change won’t please everyone, and that it might be frustrating not to get content updates as frequently, but we truly believe this will be worth it.
Thank you for continuing to push us to create the best game we can.
As always, we’ll see you topside,
Aleksander Grøndal Executive Producer
Earlier today, Embark Studios announced that the ARC Raiders team has started distributing the missing Skill Points. The rollout will continue through tomorrow, and players are encouraged to check their accounts either by the end of the day or tomorrow.
The developers noted that these points will be sent out in waves, and If you don't see yours immediately, try restarting the game or playing a single round.
Raiders!
There’s a new store rotation going live right now introducing The Castaway Set - please restart the game or click the thing to start the update!
The Third Expedition is underway, and the third and final update to the Patchwork outfit is available to all who departed in their Caravans.
Good luck to those who are starting out on new adventures in the Rust Belt, go get those Blueprints, Raiders!
>The team is aware of an issue causing some expeditioners to be missing skill points after departing. While we have managed to solve the issue, we are still tracking down the remaining accounts affected and will be granting skill points in the following days.
See you topside,
//Ossen