I am obsessed with ARC Raiders. This is my first time playing an extraction shooter and I am fascinated by the social experiment angle of it. I have had some absolutely unforgettable encounters with other people in the game and I’d say the overwhelming majority of those experiences have been positive.
That is not to say I have not been shot in the back while rummaging through a crate plenty of times as well. For the most part it seems like in solo play most people are friendly but you do run into the occasional murderer and so you have to approach every other player with caution. There is a debate raging on the ARC Raiders subreddit about the sort of people who murder strangers in these games and take their shit with some folks suggesting that is legit psychopath behavior and others claiming it’s just a video game.
Certainly the game supports and in some small ways through challenges even encourages PvP. So I am not ready to call these people psychotic. With that said, I also can’t do what they are doing and I don’t mean because I don’t have the skills. I have been killed and lost some great gear and felt that bloodlust rise up. I have said to myself after a particularly brutal game that I am done being nice and that I’m just going to kill the next person I see but I never can. When I end up behind someone with my gun trained on them I can’t pull the trigger. I always end up saying “friendly behind you” or “don’t shoot” to let them know I am there.
I recognize it’s just a videogame and I know that PvP is a part of it but I have no desire to ruin someone’s run like that. The resources they have gathered might not be real but the time/effort they spent to acquire them is certainly real and I don’t have whatever gene it is that lets me kill them and take those resources even in a game. Obviously if they shoot first it’s on and I have killed a handful of players in my 30 hours with the game so far but I find meeting randos and working together much more interesting. In my experience so far the microphone and proximity chat have been the most powerful tool in the game.
I have no problem with PvP in games like Call of Duty or Battlefield where that is literally the only option but ARC Raiders feels different to me. They have made the enemy bots so dangerous that teaming up with randos against them just makes sense. PvP is an option but I just can’t bring myself to choose it in this setting. This is all just in solo play though. When you play in groups of two or three it seems like everyone is out for blood and that’s fine. I mostly play solo and I mostly meet cool people. I am not trying to make the case that killing other players in an extraction shooter makes you a bad person in real life. In fact I think the game needs people like that in order to maintain the level of tension that makes these sorts of shooters so exciting. It just turns out I am not that guy.
At the end of the day I am probably just taking it too seriously. I think that is a testament to the world they built in ARC Raiders though. When I am dropped into one of these maps I feel 100% transported to a real place. I can walk through these ruins and imagine the grandeur of these places in their prime. I cannot help but feel like an actual scavenger poking through the bones of this lost civilization and when I see another human being doing the same I immediately feel a kinship with them. It’s us against the bots!
I will wrap this up with a clip of a game we played the other night. This is myself, Jerry and my eldest son Gabe playing. Jerry and I had been playing a couple days already but Gabe was new and we tried to warn him about just walking into the water treatment facility like he owned the place but he did not listen.
Playing Arc Raiders tonight with Jerry and my son Gabe. This is what happens when you don't listen to your Dad and your uncle 🤣 youtube.com/shorts/5QaNa...
— Gabe (@cwgabriel.bsky.social) November 1, 2025 at 10:58 PM
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-Gabe out
