ARC Raiders sale: the free trial is over, and this is not the floor

ARC Raiders' free-play window shut this morning. Embark opened the full game to everyone from 8 October and closed it on 12 October at 10:00 CEST, which means a few hundred thousand people who spent the weekend getting shot at on Pendola Pass now have a decision to make. The game is on a steep official discount while they make it.

So the question worth answering is not "is it good" — 417,000 Steam reviews at 82% positive have settled that — but whether this ARC Raiders sale is actually the moment to buy. Our price record says it is a good price and not the best one. Read on 12 October 2026, Playze holds 105 daily readings of the cheapest listing anywhere for ARC Raiders, going back to 19 June 2026, and the official Steam store was the cheapest place to buy it on exactly one of those 105 days: 1 October 2026. Keyshops took the other 104.

ARC Raiders is an extraction game first and a shooter second — most runs are decided by where you are standing, not by your aim. (Official Steam screenshot)

What the ARC Raiders sale is actually worth

The tracked low in our record is $15.87, reached on 4 and 5 July 2026 — roughly 60% off the $39.99 list price Embark has charged since launch. That is below what the current official cut is asking, and it was not a one-off fluke of a single seller: 40 of our 105 readings came in under the price the Steam sale is charging today. For something close to two days in five since mid-June, you could have bought this game for less than the "deepest discount yet" is asking.

That is the useful frame for any sale on a game with a busy key market. The headline percentage is measured against the publisher's own list price, and the publisher's list price is not what the game has been selling for. Check the live figures on the ARC Raiders game page before you decide — we explain why the lowest number is not automatically the right one in what a historical low price actually means.

There is a twist in the other direction, though. Keyshop prices on this game rose through September: our highest reading in the whole series is from 30 September 2026, nine days before the update landed. Key stock tightened as the Frozen Trail hype built, and the official sale is what broke it. So the sale did real work — it just did not take the game to new ground.

The Frozen Trail launch trailer, from the official ARC Raiders channel.

What Frozen Trail 2.0 actually added

Embark calls this its biggest update since launch and, for once, the claim survives a look at the patch notes. The centrepiece is Pendola Pass, a new map built around an old Italian village and Exodus transport hub, which the studio describes as its most complex yet with a heavy emphasis on vertical terrain. It brings two new map conditions, Frigate and Redirection, plus a Flash Freeze weather event that changes what cover is worth mid-run.

Alongside it: three new enemies — Bully, Skulker and Hydra — and two new weapons, the Bantam and the Stiletto. All of it is free to existing owners, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. A hotfix on 9 October cleaned up invisible weapon meshes, missing inventory models and several server crashes, which is roughly the shape of every ambitious content drop; if you bounced off a bug over the weekend, it has probably already been fixed.

Pendola Pass leans on vertical ground, which is a bigger change than it sounds in a game where sightlines decide fights. (Official Steam screenshot)

The practical effect is that the game is better value now than it was a fortnight ago at the same list price, and the concurrent player count has followed: Steam put it above 131,000 at once for the first time in months. For an extraction game, where your session quality depends on how many other people are out there, that matters more than it would in a single-player title.

The machines are environmental hazards as much as enemies — most deaths are a bad decision about when to run. (Official Steam screenshot)

Where ARC Raiders is cheapest, and the regional catch

One structural fact from our record that you will not find on the store page: Canada is the one market where the official store is the bargain. As of 12 October 2026 the cheapest Canadian key listing sits about 80% above what the official Canadian store charges, which is a complete inversion of the US, EU, UK and Polish pattern, where keyshops undercut official pricing. If you buy in CAD, the usual advice is wrong for this game.

Everywhere else, the keyshops are cheaper and the usual cautions apply — activation regions, seller ratings, and the fact that a key is not a refundable purchase in the way a Steam order is. Our guide to whether keyshops are safe covers what to check before you hand over a card.

Should you wait for the anniversary or the Autumn Sale?

Two dates are worth knowing. ARC Raiders released on 30 October 2025, so its first anniversary is three weeks out, and Embark has already shown it will cut the price for an occasion. Steam's Autumn Sale follows in late November. Both are plausible moments for another official discount.

What our record cannot tell you is whether either will beat $15.87, because nothing has in nearly four months of tracking. What it does say is that the floor on this game has been set by key sellers rather than by Steam events, and key stock moves on its own schedule. If you want it for the weekend, buy it. If you are price-sensitive and patient, set an alert on the game page rather than circling a date — we went through why calendar-based buying underperforms in what the price data says about pre-ordering.

Squad play is where the game is strongest, and also where it is most expensive — you want the people you play with to own it too. (Official Steam screenshot)

Is it the extraction game for you?

ARC Raiders is the softest landing in the genre. It has PvE pressure that gives you something to do besides hunt players, a loop that rewards leaving early with a half-full bag, and none of the hard-edged inventory economics that make Escape from Tarkov a second job. If Tarkov's reputation is what has kept you out of extraction shooters, this is the one to try.

If it is the shooting rather than the tension you want, Hunt: Showdown 1896 is slower, nastier and considerably cheaper, and Marathon is the other recent attempt at the same idea. For co-op without the losing-your-gear part, HELLDIVERS 2 remains the better buy — we gave the long answer in is Helldivers 2 worth it — and Embark's own THE FINALS is free, so you can audit the studio's shooting for nothing before paying for this one. More options in the best co-op games to play with friends.

The Frozen Trail first-look stream, from the official ARC Raiders channel — the longest look at Pendola Pass before release.

Extracting with a half-full bag is usually the correct play, which is what makes this the friendliest game in the genre. (Official Steam screenshot)

The bottom line

Buy it, and buy it now rather than on Steam. The free weekend is over, the content is the best it has been, and the player count is high enough that matchmaking will be healthy for months. But take the thirty seconds to compare the official sale against the key listings on the game page first, because on 104 of the 105 days we have tracked this game, Steam was not the cheapest option — and an official sale that still loses to a key is a very ARC Raiders sort of outcome.

The one exception, again, is Canada: buy direct. Everywhere else, check both.