Two shooters dominated the October 2026 Steam charts for very different reasons. ARC Raiders, Embark Studios’ PvPvE extraction shooter, pulled in a peak of 185,425 concurrent players this month after its Frozen Trail update and a free-play weekend. Helldivers 2, Arrowhead Game Studios’ co-op bug hunt, kept a smaller but loyal crowd averaging 38,520 players, nearly two years after launch. Both cost $39.99 on Steam. Both ask you to work with a squad. Neither asks the same question about trust.
ARC Raiders vs Helldivers 2 is the shooter decision a lot of players are stuck on right now, and the two games solve the co-op shooter problem in almost opposite ways. One lets other human squads steal your loot on the way out the door. The other puts four friends against waves of bugs and robots with no one to blame but bad aim. This comparison breaks down pricing, system requirements, Steam Deck support, player counts, monetization, and real benchmark data so you can pick the one that fits your squad, your hardware, and your tolerance for getting robbed at the extraction point. It is part of our ongoing gaming hardware and live-service coverage, which tracks how shooters like these two perform on PC, console, and handheld as their seasons evolve.
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What Is ARC Raiders? Embark Studios’ Extraction Shooter Explained
ARC Raiders comes from Embark Studios, the team built out of former Battlefield developers, and it runs on Unreal Engine 5. The game launched on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on October 30, 2025, after years of beta tests under a different, more survival-focused pitch. What shipped is a PvPvE extraction shooter: you and up to two teammates drop into a map, scavenge gear from a world overrun by hostile ARC robots, then fight your way to an extraction point while other player squads try to do the same thing, sometimes by shooting you in the back on the way out.
That squad cap is small on purpose. ARC Raiders supports solo play or teams of two to three Raiders, which keeps every extraction tense because you never know if the squad on the next ridge is eyeing the same loot building you are. Embark priced the base game at $39.99 on Steam and has leaned on seasonal content to keep the game current since launch. The Frozen Trail update, which landed in October 2026, added a new Pendola Pass map region and a Reward Pass progression track with free and premium tiers. The premium tier runs 60 levels deep and costs 1,150 Raider Tokens, a purchasable in-game currency that Embark has not published a direct USD conversion rate for.
Embark also ran a free-play weekend from October 8 to October 12, 2026, timed to the Frozen Trail launch, giving players full access to the complete game on Steam, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S rather than a stripped-down demo. That promotion, combined with a PvE matchmaking-toggle beta test running October 13 through 20, helped push ARC Raiders to its 185,425 concurrent player peak this month. By February 2026, Embark had sold 14 million copies worldwide, a fast number for a brand-new IP that launched just four months earlier. On Steam, ARC Raiders carries a Very Positive rating at 81% of 202,828 English-language reviews, and it holds Valve’s Steam Deck Verified badge, meaning it is confirmed to run well on the handheld out of the box.
What Is Helldivers 2? Arrowhead’s Co-Op Bug Hunt Explained
Helldivers 2 is the opposite kind of shooter. Developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, it launched on PC and PS5 on February 8, 2024, and later extended crossplay to Xbox Series X/S, so a full squad can now mix consoles and PC in the same lobby. There is no PvP layer here. You and up to three other Helldivers drop onto a planet as part of a galaxy-spanning war against the bug-like Terminids and the robotic Automatons, complete community-wide Major Orders, and extract before the mission timer or an overwhelming swarm ends the run early.
Helldivers 2 also sells for $39.99 on Steam, but its monetization model runs on Warbonds instead of Raider Tokens. Premium Warbonds typically cost 1,000 Super Credits, roughly a $10 equivalent, while newer Legendary Warbonds run 1,500 Super Credits, around $15. Super Credits can be earned slowly through normal play or bought outright, and each Warbond unlocks cosmetic armor, weapons, and stratagems as you spend credits earned in missions. Nearly two years after launch, the game had surpassed 20 million copies sold by January 2026, a figure that reflects a live-service title with real staying power rather than a launch spike that faded.
Review sentiment has held up too. Helldivers 2 carries an 80% Very Positive rating across 636,178 English-language Steam reviews, and its Metacritic score sits at 82 based on 67 critic reviews. Valve lists the game as Playable on Steam Deck rather than fully Verified, meaning some on-screen prompts or settings may not be optimized for the handheld’s controls, a gap that matters if you are deciding which of these two shooters travels better.
ARC Raiders vs Helldivers 2: Specs Comparison Table
Here is the full side-by-side, pulling together developer, pricing, player counts, and platform support as they stood in October 2026.
| Category | ARC Raiders | Helldivers 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Embark Studios | Arrowhead Game Studios |
| Publisher | Embark Studios (self-published) | Sony Interactive Entertainment |
| Release date | October 30, 2025 | February 8, 2024 |
| Platforms | PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S | PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S |
| Genre / format | PvPvE extraction shooter | Co-op PvE horde shooter |
| Squad size | Solo, duo, or trio (max 3) | Up to 4 players |
| Crossplay | Released on all three platforms; Embark has not published a formal cross-platform matchmaking policy | Confirmed crossplay across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S |
| Base price (Steam) | $39.99 | $39.99 |
| Steam review score | 81% positive, Very Positive (202,828 English reviews) | 80% positive, Very Positive (636,178 English reviews) |
| Recent review trend (last 30 days) | 73% positive (6,840 reviews) | 86% positive (4,052 reviews) |
| Critic score | Not yet listed on Metacritic in available sources | 82 on Metacritic (67 critic reviews) |
| Steam Deck status | Verified | Playable (not Verified) |
| Copies sold | 14 million by February 2026 | 20 million+ by January 2026 |
| October 2026 average Steam players | 69,348 | 38,520 |
| October 2026 peak Steam players | 185,425 | 61,000 |
| Monetization | Paid base game plus optional Reward Pass (Raider Tokens) | Paid base game plus optional Warbonds (Super Credits) |
The numbers tell a clear story about momentum. ARC Raiders is newer, louder, and currently pulling nearly double the concurrent Steam players, while Helldivers 2 is older, steadier, and has quietly outsold the newcomer by six million copies over a longer runway. Neither figure cancels the other out, they describe different stages of a game’s life.
Pricing and Monetization Compared
On paper, ARC Raiders and Helldivers 2 charge the same entry fee. Both list at $39.99 on Steam, and neither is free-to-play, despite periodic confusion around ARC Raiders’ free-play weekends. Embark Studios has run limited free-access windows, including the October 8-12, 2026 event, but these are time-boxed trials of the full game rather than a permanent business model change. OpenCritic and several outlets covered speculation that ARC Raiders might go free-to-play, but as of October 2026 it remains a one-time purchase with optional seasonal content layered on top.
| Pricing item | ARC Raiders | Helldivers 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Base game (Steam) | $39.99 | $39.99 |
| Base game (PS5, October 2026 promo) | $19.99 (discounted from $39.99, promo ended Oct 22, 2026) | Not confirmed in available PS Store listings |
| Season / progression system | Reward Pass (free + premium tracks, 60 levels) | Warbonds (individually priced, permanent once unlocked) |
| Premium currency | Raider Tokens (USD rate not published) | Super Credits |
| Typical season-content cost | 1,150 Raider Tokens for the premium Reward Pass track | 1,000 Super Credits (~$10) for a standard Warbond; 1,500 Super Credits (~$15) for Legendary Warbonds |
| Free trial events in 2026 | October 8-12 full-game free-play weekend tied to Frozen Trail | No equivalent full free-access weekend found in available sources |
The practical difference shows up after the purchase. Helldivers 2’s Warbond system is a fixed catalog you unlock permanently with credits you can earn in-game, so a patient player can gear up without spending more money. ARC Raiders’ Reward Pass follows a more familiar seasonal battle-pass shape, with a time-limited window to grind or buy through its 60 levels before the next season resets the clock. If you dislike expiring progression tracks, Helldivers 2’s model is friendlier to your wallet and your schedule.
System Requirements: Which Game Runs on Older Hardware
This is where the two games split sharply, and it matters if you are trying to decide which shooter your current PC can actually handle. Helldivers 2’s official Steam page lists a lower CPU and GPU floor at minimum settings, but it also demands a surprising 135GB of storage at minimum, a figure that drops to 40GB in Steam’s own recommended-tier listing, an inconsistency that appears to be how Arrowhead’s own requirements page is formatted rather than an error on our end.
| Requirement | ARC Raiders Minimum | ARC Raiders Recommended | Helldivers 2 Minimum | Helldivers 2 Recommended |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 64-bit | Windows 10 | Windows 10 |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-6600K / AMD Ryzen 5 1600 | Intel Core i5-9600K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600 | Intel Core i7-4790K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X | Intel Core i7-9700K / AMD Ryzen 7 3700X |
| GPU | GTX 1050 Ti / RX 580 / Intel Arc A380 | RTX 2070 / RX 5700 XT / Intel Arc B570 | GTX 1050 Ti / RX 470 | RTX 2060 / RX 6600 XT |
| RAM | 12GB | 16GB | 8GB | 16GB |
| Storage | Not listed separately on Steam | Not listed separately on Steam | 135GB | 40GB (SSD recommended) |
| API | DirectX 12 | DirectX 12 | Not specified | Not specified |
Helldivers 2 technically asks for less RAM at the minimum tier, 8GB against ARC Raiders’ 12GB, which matters for anyone still running an older laptop. But Helldivers 2’s minimum CPU, a Core i7-4790K from 2014, pairs with a storage requirement that is more than triple ARC Raiders’ footprint based on what Steam lists. If your bottleneck is disk space rather than RAM or CPU generation, ARC Raiders is the lighter install by a wide margin.
October 2026 Steam Player Counts and Review Scores
Player count snapshots change by the week in live-service shooters, but October 2026 gives a useful read on where each community stands. ARC Raiders averaged 69,348 concurrent players across the month with a peak of 185,425, a number clearly inflated by its free-play weekend and the PvE matchmaking beta running October 13-20. Helldivers 2, with no equivalent promotional spike that month, averaged 38,520 players with a 61,000 peak, according to Steam-tracking sites, though one secondary tracker reported a higher and harder-to-verify figure that we are treating cautiously given the conflicting methodology behind it.
Review sentiment tells a more interesting story than the raw player counts. ARC Raiders’ recent 30-day review score, 73% positive, actually sits below its 81% all-time rating, suggesting the Frozen Trail update and the influx of free-weekend players brought some friction, possibly from the new PvE matchmaking toggle or Reward Pass pricing. Helldivers 2 runs the opposite direction: its recent 30-day score of 86% positive beats its 80% all-time average, hinting that whatever Arrowhead shipped in its most recent content wave landed better with the existing community than ARC Raiders’ latest season did with its newer one.
Gameplay Differences: PvPvE Extraction vs Pure Co-Op PvE
The core gameplay loop is where ARC Raiders vs Helldivers 2 stops being a spec-sheet argument and becomes a personality test. ARC Raiders is built around risk you cannot fully control. You loot a map, fight scripted ARC robots along the way, and then have to survive the walk to extraction knowing a rival squad of real players might be camping the exit with better gear than you. Every successful run feels earned specifically because someone else could have taken it from you. Every failed run can feel like getting robbed rather than simply losing to the environment.
Helldivers 2 removes that layer entirely. The only enemy is the Terminid swarm or the Automaton army, and losing a mission is purely a function of your squad’s coordination, ammo management, and whether someone remembered to bring the right stratagems. That design makes Helldivers 2 a lower-stress hang-out shooter for four friends who want chaos without the risk of a stranger undoing their progress. ARC Raiders is a tighter, tenser experience built for squads who want the stakes of PvP without abandoning a cooperative core.
Why Squad Size Changes the Feel of Each Game
Helldivers 2’s four-player cap gives Arrowhead room to design missions around role overlap. If one Helldiver is dedicated to calling in orbital strikes and another is running crowd control, a four-person squad can cover more ground and more mission objectives simultaneously than ARC Raiders’ three-player cap allows. ARC Raiders keeps its squads smaller specifically to preserve the extraction shooter’s tension. A four-player ARC Raiders squad would likely dominate most encounters against rival trios, which is exactly the kind of power imbalance Embark’s design avoids by capping squads at three.
Squad Size, Crossplay, and Matchmaking
Helldivers 2 has the clearer crossplay story. Sony and Arrowhead confirmed cross-platform play across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, so a mixed-platform squad of four can drop into the same mission without restriction. ARC Raiders launched simultaneously on all three platforms, but Embark has not published a detailed crossplay policy to the same degree, so treat ARC Raiders’ cross-platform matchmaking as platform-available rather than formally confirmed in the way Helldivers 2’s is. If your friend group splits across Xbox, PS5, and PC, Helldivers 2 currently has the more documented answer to the question of whether you can all play together.
Weapon Loadouts, Stratagems, and Progression Compared
Progression works almost backward between the two games. In ARC Raiders, what you bring into a map is what you risk losing permanently. Guns, ammo, and gear are scavenged, crafted, or bought from in-game vendors, then carried into a raid, and if your squad dies before extraction, a rival squad or the environment can take it all. That loot-risk loop is the entire reason the game caps squads at three: a bigger team with better gear would make every raid a foregone conclusion rather than a gamble.
Helldivers 2 strips that risk away and replaces it with stratagems, call-in abilities like orbital strikes, turrets, and resupply pods that you select before a mission and then earn back cooldowns for during it. Nothing you bring into a Helldivers 2 mission can be taken by another human player, so progression is additive rather than risk-based: you unlock more stratagems and weapons over time through Warbonds, and your existing loadout never degrades because a rival squad outplayed you. Players who enjoy build theorycrafting without the fear of losing gear tend to gravitate toward Helldivers 2’s model, while players who want every item to feel like it actually matters tend to prefer ARC Raiders’ higher-stakes approach.
Anti-Cheat and Fair Play: Why It Matters More in ARC Raiders
Cheating does different damage depending on which of these two games you are playing. In Helldivers 2’s pure PvE format, a cheater mostly just ruins their own experience or, at worst, trivializes a mission for their own squad. In ARC Raiders’ PvPvE format, a cheater with aimbot software or wallhacks can camp an extraction point and wipe out legitimate squads who had no way to see them coming, which turns a single bad actor into a problem for every player on that server. That asymmetry is exactly why extraction shooters as a category have leaned harder into server-side anti-cheat enforcement than pure co-op PvE titles typically need to.
The broader industry has been moving toward hardware-backed anti-cheat solutions precisely because client-side detection alone struggles against modern cheat tooling. Our walkthrough on AWS Nitro Enclaves for anti-cheat infrastructure covers how studios are isolating game-server validation from the player’s own machine, an approach that matters more for a game like ARC Raiders, where the entire extraction loop depends on trusting that the squad shooting at you is actually as skilled as their kill feed suggests, than it does for Helldivers 2, where the only opponent with something to prove is the Terminid swarm itself.
The Bigger Picture: Shooter Pricing and Platform Growth in 2026
ARC Raiders and Helldivers 2 are not competing in a vacuum. Steam itself hit a record 43.5 million concurrent users in 2026, and that platform-wide growth is lifting player counts for shooters across the board, extraction-based and PvE alike. At the same time, big-budget annual shooters are fighting their own pricing war, as covered in our breakdown of the Battlefield 6 vs Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 price gap, where two full-price blockbuster releases are competing for the same holiday budget that might otherwise go toward a Warbond or a Reward Pass purchase.
That context matters for ARC Raiders and Helldivers 2 specifically because both are mid-tier priced at $39.99, sitting below the $69.99-and-up bracket that Battlefield 6 and Modern Warfare 4 occupy. Neither Embark nor Arrowhead has to win a marketing war against each other so much as they have to keep convincing players that a two-year-old or year-old live-service shooter is still worth a slot in a crowded library next to this season’s annual blockbuster. The fact that both games are still growing or holding steady in October 2026, against that backdrop, says as much about their design as any spec sheet does.
Steam Deck and Handheld Performance
Handheld PC gaming has made this comparison more relevant than it would have been a few years ago. ARC Raiders carries Valve’s full Steam Deck Verified badge, which means Valve’s own compatibility testing confirmed the game runs well with default controls, readable text, and no major input issues on the handheld. Helldivers 2 sits one tier down at Playable, Valve’s label for games that work on Steam Deck but may need manual tweaks, a non-default control scheme, or text that is hard to read without adjustment.
That gap matters more than it sounds. A Verified badge is Valve putting its name behind the experience without caveats, and ARC Raiders earning it against a PvPvE shooter’s typically twitchy aim requirements is a real engineering result for Embark. If handheld play is a priority and you are choosing between carrying one of these two shooters on a Steam Deck, ROG Ally, or Legion Go, ARC Raiders is the safer out-of-the-box pick.
Benchmark Performance and Hardware Testing
Real third-party FPS testing for ARC Raiders vs Helldivers 2 is still thin compared to more established shooters, but three distinct sources point in the same direction. PCGamesN’s hands-on performance test on an RTX 4070 system found ARC Raiders averaging 104 fps at 1080p with a 55 fps 1% low, dropping to 78 fps average at 1440p, and falling to a sluggish 43 fps average at 4K with a 33 fps 1% low. That 4K result lines up with a game built on Unreal Engine 5’s heavier rendering pipeline, where native 4K without upscaling tends to punish even recent mid-range cards.
The second data point comes from Valve’s own Steam Deck compatibility program, which is effectively a structured hardware benchmark in its own right. ARC Raiders earning full Verified status means it cleared Valve’s bar for playable frame rates, readable UI, and functioning default controls on the handheld’s fixed hardware profile, a result Helldivers 2 has not yet matched at the Playable tier. The third reference point is the games’ own published minimum and recommended specifications, which function as the developers’ baseline performance promise. Helldivers 2’s jump from a GTX 1050 Ti minimum to an RTX 2060 recommended card implies a steep difference between “it runs” and “it runs well,” a gap echoed in ARC Raiders’ own listed spec jump from a GTX 1050 Ti minimum to an RTX 2070 recommended card.
Real-World Examples: Free Weekends, Milestones, and Community Moments
Numbers on a spec sheet only tell part of the story. Here is how both games have actually played out in the real world through 2026.
- ARC Raiders’ October free-play weekend. The October 8-12, 2026 promotion gave full access to Steam, PS5, and Xbox players simultaneously, timed deliberately to the Frozen Trail content drop so new players would land in the middle of fresh seasonal content rather than a stale map rotation.
- A 185,425-player Steam peak. ARC Raiders hit its largest concurrent player count this October, driven by the combination of the free weekend and a PvE matchmaking-toggle beta that let squads opt out of facing rival human teams entirely, a direct response to player feedback about extraction-point ambushes.
- Helldivers 2 crossing 20 million copies sold. By January 2026, nearly two full years after its February 2024 launch, Arrowhead’s co-op shooter had sold more than 20 million copies, proof that a live-service PvE game can keep growing well past its launch window with the right Major Order cadence.
- ARC Raiders reaching 14 million copies in four months. Embark’s extraction shooter hit 14 million copies sold by February 2026, just four months after its October 2025 launch, a faster sales velocity than Helldivers 2 managed in its own early months, even if Helldivers 2 has since pulled ahead on total lifetime units.
- Contrast with Bungie’s Marathon. Not every 2025-2026 extraction shooter landed. Bungie’s own PvP-focused extraction title Marathon saw player counts drop 33% after launch, a contrast that makes ARC Raiders’ sustained October numbers look stronger by comparison rather than taking success in the extraction genre for granted.
- Divergent recent review trends. Helldivers 2’s 86% positive score over its last 30 days of reviews, up from an 80% lifetime average, suggests Arrowhead’s most recent balance pass landed well, while ARC Raiders’ 73% recent score against an 81% lifetime average points to some friction around the newest season’s pricing or matchmaking changes.
- A PvE-only matchmaking test born from community pressure. ARC Raiders’ October 13-20, 2026 beta let squads toggle off human opponents entirely for a limited window, a direct response to years of player complaints about extraction-point ambushes, and an acknowledgment from Embark that not every Raider wants the PvP layer every single run.
- Two very different Metacritic stories. Helldivers 2’s steady 82 critic score has barely moved since launch, while ARC Raiders has yet to accumulate the same volume of formal critic coverage, a gap that reflects how extraction shooters without a traditional review-embargo cycle often build reputation through player word-of-mouth and Steam charts before critics catch up.
5 Use Cases: Which Game Fits Your Playstyle
Specs and player counts matter, but the right pick usually comes down to how you actually play. Here are five common situations and which shooter fits each one.
- You play solo or in a duo and like tension. ARC Raiders supports solo and two-person teams directly, and its PvPvE format rewards careful, quiet play over brute force, which suits smaller squads better than a game built around four-person coordination.
- You have exactly four friends who want zero PvP stress. Helldivers 2’s four-player cap and pure PvE design mean nobody in your group has to worry about a stranger stealing a mission’s reward on the way out. The only variable is how well you coordinate against the Terminids or Automatons.
- You mainly play on Steam Deck, ROG Ally, or Legion Go. ARC Raiders’ full Steam Deck Verified badge makes it the safer handheld pick over Helldivers 2’s Playable-but-unoptimized rating, especially for a shooter where aim precision already suffers on a small screen.
- Your PC is older and storage-constrained. ARC Raiders’ lighter install footprint, without the 135GB minimum Helldivers 2 lists on Steam, matters if you are juggling a smaller SSD across multiple games.
- Your squad is split across Xbox, PS5, and PC. Helldivers 2’s confirmed, documented crossplay across all three platforms is the safer bet if your friend group is already scattered across different consoles and doesn’t want to second-guess matchmaking.
- You want the game with the most momentum right now. ARC Raiders’ October 2026 peak of 185,425 concurrent players, against Helldivers 2’s 61,000, means lobbies fill faster and content creators are more actively covering it this month.
- You want a game that has proven it can last. Helldivers 2’s 20 million copies sold and ongoing Major Order content nearly two years after launch is the stronger bet if you want a shooter you will still be playing in 2028, not just this season.
Migration Guide: Switching Between ARC Raiders and Helldivers 2
If your squad is moving from one game to the other, a handful of adjustments make the switch smoother in either direction.
Moving From Helldivers 2 to ARC Raiders
Drop your four-person habits first. ARC Raiders caps squads at three, so if your usual Helldivers 2 crew is a full foursome, someone sits out or you split into two separate ARC Raiders teams. Expect a mental shift in how you treat loot too: in Helldivers 2, nothing you carry can be taken by another human squad, but in ARC Raiders every item you are hauling toward extraction is a target for a rival trio. Slow down near extraction points rather than sprinting in with Helldivers 2 instincts, since a loud final approach in ARC Raiders tends to draw attention from the wrong kind of neighbor. On the hardware side, check your RAM. ARC Raiders’ 12GB minimum is higher than Helldivers 2’s 8GB floor, so a PC that barely cleared Helldivers 2’s minimum spec may need a memory upgrade first.
Moving From ARC Raiders to Helldivers 2
You can relax the paranoia. There is no rival squad waiting to ambush you at extraction in Helldivers 2, so loadout choices can prioritize offense and area control over stealth and escape routes. Budget for the Warbond economy differently too: unlike ARC Raiders’ time-limited Reward Pass, Helldivers 2’s Warbonds stay purchasable indefinitely once unlocked, so there is no pressure to grind a season before it resets. If storage space is tight, clear more room than you think you need. Helldivers 2’s listed 135GB minimum footprint is substantially larger than ARC Raiders’, and a cramped SSD will bottleneck load times even on hardware that otherwise meets the GPU and CPU requirements.
Pros and Cons
ARC Raiders
- Full Steam Deck Verified badge for reliable handheld play
- Smaller install footprint than Helldivers 2’s listed storage requirement
- Stronger October 2026 concurrent player numbers, 185,425 peak against Helldivers 2’s 61,000
- Fast sales velocity, 14 million copies in four months post-launch
- PvP layer adds tension some PvE-only players will not want
- Recent 30-day review score (73%) trails its own lifetime average (81%), suggesting season-specific friction
- Crossplay policy across PC, PS5, and Xbox is less formally documented than Helldivers 2’s
Helldivers 2
- Confirmed, documented crossplay across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S
- Lower minimum RAM requirement (8GB) than ARC Raiders (12GB)
- Warbonds stay permanently unlockable, no expiring season pressure
- 20 million-plus copies sold and a Metacritic score of 82 show durable, broad appeal
- Four-player squads support more mission-role variety than ARC Raiders’ three-player cap
- Steam Deck Playable status trails ARC Raiders’ Verified badge
- Minimum storage requirement, 135GB listed on Steam, is far larger than ARC Raiders’ footprint
The Verdict: Which Shooter Wins in 2026
There isn’t a single winner here, because ARC Raiders and Helldivers 2 are optimized for different squads and different risk tolerances. If the question is pure October 2026 momentum, ARC Raiders takes it clearly: a 185,425 concurrent player peak against 61,000, a Steam Deck Verified badge Helldivers 2 has not matched, and a lighter install for anyone tight on SSD space. Embark’s extraction format is also simply newer, and that freshness shows in both the numbers and the free-weekend buzz around Frozen Trail.
But momentum is not the same as durability. Helldivers 2’s 20 million-plus copies sold, its 82 Metacritic score, and its recent 86% positive review trend, up from an 80% lifetime average, point to a game that is still finding ways to please its community nearly two years after launch, on a lower hardware floor and with documented crossplay that ARC Raiders cannot yet match on paper. If you want the shooter with the most energy right now and don’t mind a little PvP paranoia, pick ARC Raiders. If you want four friends, zero human betrayal, and a track record that already spans two years, Helldivers 2 remains the steadier bet.
Both games also sit inside a broader shift in shooter design worth watching. The genre keeping both a PvPvE extraction format and a pure co-op PvE format commercially healthy at the same time, while a heavily funded rival like Bungie’s Marathon stumbled, suggests players are rewarding clear design identity over chasing a single dominant formula, a pattern worth tracking as both studios plan their next seasons.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ARC Raiders PvP or PvE?
ARC Raiders is a PvPvE extraction shooter. You fight AI-controlled ARC robots while scavenging a map, but other player squads can also attack you, especially near extraction points, making it a hybrid rather than a pure PvE experience like Helldivers 2.
Is Helldivers 2 or ARC Raiders cheaper?
Both cost $39.99 for the base game on Steam as of October 2026. ARC Raiders has occasionally dropped to $19.99 on PS5 during limited promotions, but its regular Steam price matches Helldivers 2’s.
How many players can play ARC Raiders together?
ARC Raiders supports solo play or squads of up to three players. This is a deliberate design choice to keep PvPvE encounters balanced, unlike Helldivers 2’s larger four-player squads.
Does Helldivers 2 have crossplay with ARC Raiders-style matchmaking?
Helldivers 2 has confirmed crossplay across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S, letting a single four-player squad mix platforms freely. ARC Raiders is available on the same three platforms, but Embark Studios has not published the same level of formal crossplay documentation as Arrowhead and Sony have for Helldivers 2.
Which game runs better on Steam Deck, ARC Raiders or Helldivers 2?
ARC Raiders holds a full Steam Deck Verified badge from Valve, while Helldivers 2 is rated Playable, a step below Verified. If handheld performance is your priority, ARC Raiders is currently the more polished option on Steam Deck.
Is ARC Raiders free-to-play?
No. ARC Raiders is a $39.99 one-time purchase on Steam. Embark Studios has run limited free-play weekends, including one from October 8-12, 2026, but these are temporary promotions and not a permanent shift to a free-to-play model.
Which game has sold more copies, ARC Raiders or Helldivers 2?
Helldivers 2 has sold more total copies, passing 20 million by January 2026 across nearly two years on the market. ARC Raiders reached 14 million copies by February 2026, just four months after its October 2025 launch, a faster early sales pace but a smaller lifetime total so far.
What are the minimum PC requirements for each game?
ARC Raiders needs an Intel Core i5-6600K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600, a GTX 1050 Ti, RX 580, or Intel Arc A380, and 12GB of RAM. Helldivers 2 needs an Intel Core i7-4790K or AMD Ryzen 5 1500X, a GTX 1050 Ti or RX 470, 8GB of RAM, and 135GB of storage at minimum, according to each game’s official Steam listing.
