If you’ve played ARC Raiders at all since the game dropped at the end of October 2025, you likely know about the ‘late joining’ issue that has plagued players since the beginning. It’s not an issue with the game, as it’s by design, but it’s a problem for players who appreciate full raids and lengthy sessions.
In a recent interview, Embark Studios confirmed that they’re aware of the concerns players have with joining raids late, but they’re trying to make amends and set minds at ease. They’ve said that ‘players who join late economically profit way more than people who aren’t.’
Really?
Why Do You Join Late in ARC Raiders?
If it wasn’t already obvious enough, you can join late in ARC Raiders, often by ten or fifteen minutes, because Embark Studios wants to prevent lobbies from running stale. If you start with 30 minutes on the clock, the raid would be flat empty by the 15 or 10-minute mark, so feeding in more players later on ensures there’s almost always someone else to fight or meet.
However, players who load in late are almost always disappointed, as it feels like there isn’t enough time to do anything in the game.
If you spawn in late on a map like Spaceport, you’re basically writing off the raid, as it can take several minutes just to cross to the other side of the map, if that’s where your objective or goal is.
In a recent interview with Games Radar, design lead Virgil Watkins explained that the team at Embark Studios is aware of this concern and actively tracking it:
That’s also another topic we’ve been discussing a lot, and it’s another one of those interesting things of data versus perception. We 100% acknowledge the whole thing of, ‘Man, I came in to do that trial and now I clearly don’t have enough time to do that, and that sucks, so I’m just going to leave,’ or whatever. That aspect is definitely not great.
But similar to the perception of free kits versus what they do, the perception around late joining and what it affords you has been quite interesting. Players are like, ‘The loot’s all gone,’ or whatever else. But players who join late economically profit way more than people who aren’t.
Watkins insists that joining late in ARC Raiders is not a bad thing. It means you can pick up the ‘remnants of fights’, picking apart dead bodies, fallen ARC, and scooping up any loot that might have been left behind. He suggested you’ll be loading into a quieter raid that has run mostly out of steam, leaving you to be left alone a little more when it comes to looting.
He stressed that everything is by design and that there are good intentions behind the decision to run ARC Raiders like this:
Okay, well my plan A isn’t possible. I’m gonna do my plan B or C now instead.
The amount of loot we spawn, where it’s spawned, where the spawn points are – it’s all set up in a way that there should be plenty of stuff for players to do.
Embark acknowledges it’s a pain point, and Watkins said they’re looking at that and ‘trying to do more on that side of things’, reducing the suffering brought on by joining late with an exclusive objective in mind that you now can’t accomplish.
Are you ever aggravated by the late joining mechanic in ARC Raiders? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
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Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
Most people have already completed everything and pretty much are looking for bp at least from my games everyone is looking for bp and joining late is a sure way of not finding any. You may get lucky and find a drawer that someone missed but thats rare. Full matches are way better and they need to remove late spawn raids, especially on Stella where the map is small and there is only so much you can loot. This is one map where I consistently spawn in late and everything is looted.
As someone that has 200+ hours in the game, most of the blueprints I want, tons of money, etc., late spawns suck because I’m mainly playing to 3-star trials, and late spawns make it near impossible on some maps. I get that for balance a late spawn is going to happen, but when you get a sub-20 min spawn 3 or 4 times in a row it’s bulls***.
The players don’t like late join, I don’t know what metric they are using to say late profits more, but that’s not been my experience.
Every corpse, container and junk pile has already been looted with everything worth anything extracted long since.