Newly released extraction shooter ARC Raiders experienced some server outages during its first weekend, and will now compensate players for the inconvenience by distributing the game’s premium currency, Raider Tokens. A Sever Slam was hosted a couple of weeks before release to hopefully avoid such issues, but it would seem ARC Raiders has proven to be more popular than expected – a good sign as it moves quickly to post-launch content updates in November and December.

According to a message on the game’s official Discord server, players will be given 500 Raider Tokens for free, as a gesture of appreciation for the players’ patience. Over the weekend following ARC Raiders‘ release, so many players joined that the servers were overwhelmed, and after a brief outage, a login queue was implemented to do damage control. Here is developer Embark Studios’ full message:

Raiders!

We are overwhelmed by how many of you joined the fight against the ARC. Your bravery and resilience are truly inspiring.

Our team is working with determination to get you into those shuttles in a timely manner and we thank you for your patience while we’re fine-tuning the system. To show our appreciation, we’re sending you 500 Raider Tokens to use as you see fit.

We are also sending the Server Slammer variant of the Hiker Backpack for those of you who joined the test (make sure to check your inbox).

We will be slowly rolling them out today [November 3], don’t worry if you don’t see it right away, check again in a couple of hours.

ARC Raiders Servers Go Down During Launch Weekend, Players Compensated With Premium Currency

500 Raider Tokens Cost $5

Server issues are nothing new when it comes to online multiplayer games, and neither are login queues. Just a few weeks ago, Battlefield 6‘s record-breaking launch instituted a login queue so that the system was not overwhelmed. ARC Raiders‘ launch on Thursday, October 30, had some minor matchmaking issues that were quickly fixed, but the following weekend saw worse technical issues.

Without many details from Embark, there appeared to be general network issues due to the number of players logged in. Among the reported problems were inability to log in, trouble with the party system and voice chat, and difficulties with matchmaking. For the inconvenience, players are effectively getting $5 worth of Raider Tokens, the game’s premium currency used to purchase cosmetics. 500 Raider Tokens can be bought for $4.99 in-game.

A Very Nice Gesture Amid ARC Raiders’ Successful Launch

ARC Raiders Reached Fifth Most-Played Game On Steam

A drone flying through an abandoned city in ARC Raiders.

Server issues are unfortunate, and it’s nice to see Embark respond with such grace. 500 Raider Tokens unfortunately won’t go exceptionally far – there has been a lot of criticism surrounding ARC Raiders‘ cosmetic pricing already – but it’s a very nice gesture nonetheless. The game clearly had a lot of momentum behind it after the excitement surrounding the Server Slam a couple of weeks ago, but the outage shows that it was perhaps more popular than expected.

ARC Raiders broke into the top five for the most played game on Steam (according to SteamDB), where it hit an all-time peak concurrent player count of 354,836. It only trails juggernauts Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Battlefield 6, and PUBG: Battlegrounds. Considering the other platforms ARC Raiders is available on (PS5, Xbox, and other PC storefronts like Epic Games Store), the total player count is likely much higher.

You can actually see where the outage occurred on the SteamDB chart Sunday afternoon. The concurrent player count takes a sharp dip, losing roughly 40,000 players on Steam before shooting back up and hitting the all-time peak shortly after. The login queue seems to have alleviated the issues, but the ARC Raiders developers were nonetheless apologetic and are passing out Raider Tokens as compensation.