If you’ve been playing ARC Raiders and wondering why you keep ending up in certain lobbies — or debating with your squad whether there’s a way to game the system — Embark Studios just gave everyone the answer they’ve been waiting for. In a detailed official breakdown published May 20, 2026, the developer pulled back the curtain on how its playstyle-based matchmaking actually works, busted a stack of community myths that have been circulating since launch, and pushed two significant live changes to the system right alongside the post.
Here’s everything Embark confirmed, everything they denied, and what the two new changes mean for how your next run gets put together.
The Core Philosophy: Unpredictability With Guardrails
Embark opened the post by reaffirming the design philosophy behind Topside. The whole tension of ARC Raiders — not knowing whether the Raider you spot across the map is going to wave or shoot — is intentional and fundamental. “In the Rust Belt, the kind of Raider you become should be up to you,” the post reads. “Topside works because it’s unpredictable. You can never be sure if you can trust the people you meet, or how dangerous they might be. That freedom — and the uncertainty it creates — is what drives the tension, the encounters, and the choices that make every run feel like its own story.”
But unpredictability has a limit. Embark doesn’t want dedicated full-aggression PvP players to completely roll lobbies of PvE-focused players who are just trying to extract. That’s not tension — that’s frustration. So the system is designed around two priorities in order: fairness first (equal squad sizes matched against equal squad sizes), then playstyle similarity to keep encounters broadly in the same ballpark of intent.
How the System Actually Works: A Continuous Scale, Not Two Buckets
The most important thing Embark confirmed — and the thing that clears up the most confusion — is that the matchmaking system does not separate players into binary categories. There are no “PvP lobbies” and no “PvE lobbies.” There is a continuous scale.
Some players sit near the pure PvE end. Some sit near pure PvP. But the vast majority of players land somewhere in the middle, shifting based on how they actually play across multiple runs. The system tracks player behavior over time and assigns each player a position on that scale, then tries to match players who sit closer together on it — while deliberately not matching players who are very far apart. A committed full-aggression PvP hunter shouldn’t be matched into a lobby where everyone else is running purely for loot and avoiding all contact.
Critically, Embark was clear that this is not a guarantee of any particular experience. “Our system tries to place you with players who sit closer to you on that scale, while still keeping Topside from becoming completely predictable,” the post states. A peaceful run can still turn hostile. A cautious player can still get ambushed. The system shapes the probability distribution of your encounters — it doesn’t control the outcome of any individual run.
Player behavior also shapes future lobbies gradually over time, not immediately. A single aggressive run won’t instantly flip your matchmaking profile. The system builds a picture over multiple sessions and adjusts incrementally, which means you can’t quickly manipulate it by playing differently for a few rounds.
Nine Myths Officially Busted
Embark used the post to directly address the theories and misconceptions that have been spreading through the community since launch. Here’s what they confirmed is not true:
- There are only two lobby types (PvP or PvE). False. The system is a continuous scale, not a binary split.
- Shooting or killing another player instantly locks you into PvP lobbies. False. One interaction doesn’t flip your matchmaking profile.
- The feedback you leave after a match influences your lobby. False. Post-match feedback has no bearing on matchmaking.
- Your loadout affects which lobby you get. False. Weapon and gear choices play no role in matchmaking placement.
- Matchmaking is determined by the squad leader alone. False. The system accounts for the entire squad’s individual histories, not just the person who created the group.
- Game updates reset your matchmaking progress. False. Your player history carries through patches and updates — the data built up over your session history is persistent and remains the primary driver of lobby placement.
- You can quickly game the system by playing passively for a few rounds. False. Behavior changes the scale gradually, not immediately. Short-term manipulation doesn’t work.
- Surrendering or leaving quickly has significant influence. This one is being addressed directly — see the live changes below.
- Defending yourself from an attack is treated the same as starting a fight. This was actually true — and it’s also being fixed in the live update.
The Two Live Changes That Go With This Post
The transparency post didn’t come alone. Embark pushed two matchmaking changes live on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S simultaneously with the blog, addressing the two most significant community pain points the studio acknowledged.
Fix 1: Defending Yourself Is No Longer Treated as Aggression
This is the big one. Previously, when a player attacked you and you fought back, both the attacker and the defender were flagged as PvP by the matchmaking system. The system had no way to distinguish between who started the fight and who was just trying to survive it. The result was that genuinely PvE-focused players who defended themselves were being incorrectly pushed toward higher-aggression lobbies — punished for a reasonable response to being attacked.
That’s now fixed. Defensive actions are now categorized separately from aggressive initiations, meaning the system can distinguish between a player who hunts others down and a player who was jumped and had to shoot back. If you get attacked and kill the aggressor, that should no longer shift your playstyle rating toward PvP. This is a meaningful change for anyone who plays cautiously but occasionally gets caught in combat they didn’t seek out.
Fix 2: Low-Activity Rounds Carry Less Weight
The second change addresses a different kind of distortion. Previously, rounds where a player spawned in, interacted very little, and left quickly — or effectively surrendered early — carried significant weight in the matchmaking calculation. Some players were using this deliberately to try to manipulate their playstyle rating by repeatedly doing passive, low-engagement runs. Others were simply having off sessions or disconnecting early for legitimate reasons and getting penalized for it.
Going forward, low-activity rounds carry significantly less weight in a player’s history. Your matchmaking profile is now built much more strongly around runs where you actually played the game — the raids where real decisions were made and real interactions occurred. Short, empty sessions matter less. Active, engaged runs matter more.
About 30% of Players Are PvE-Focused — And Embark Is Fine With That
One of the more interesting data points to come out of the post and surrounding developer comments: about 30% of ARC Raiders players focus on PvE, and Embark is happy with that. The studio has said it didn’t expect such a passionate PvE-oriented player base, and the matchmaking system improvements are in part a direct response to wanting to protect and serve that portion of the community. The goal isn’t to push everyone toward conflict — it’s to give PvE players a realistic shot at quieter runs while maintaining the unpredictability that makes the game what it is.
What This Means for How You Should Play
The practical takeaway from all of this is fairly clean. Your matchmaking profile is built on your actual behavior across real sessions, it shifts gradually rather than immediately, and the only reliable way to influence it is to consistently play in the style you want your lobbies to reflect. The most effective way for users to influence their experience is to simply play in a manner that aligns with their preferred style.
If you’re a PvE player who occasionally gets dragged into combat, the defensive play fix should help prevent those moments from counting against you going forward. If you’ve been trying to game the system with quick empty sessions, that’s no longer going to work as intended. And if you’ve been convinced there’s a magic combination of loadout choices or post-match feedback that shapes your lobbies — there isn’t. None of that stuff matters.
Embark has also confirmed that the system will continue to be tuned as data comes in from these new changes. The current state of 2026 is not considered final, and further adjustments will arrive based on how the community responds to the live update. The studio’s commitment to transparency here — after months of saying very little about how matchmaking worked — suggests this level of communication is something they intend to maintain as the game evolves.
For a game that launched with this much discussion around one of its core systems, getting the clarity on record alongside actual live fixes is a solid move. The extraction shooter space rewards trust between developer and player base, and Embark seems to understand that. If you’re keeping tabs on everything happening in gaming this week beyond ARC Raiders, the Ubisoft earnings story confirming new Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Ghost Recon games before 2029 is a big one for franchise fans, and the Fortnite versus Apple final battle is heating up simultaneously. It’s a busy week across the industry.
Meanwhile, the broader conversation about platform transparency and creator fairness has been a running theme — the Kickstarter matchmaking controversy is a reminder that when companies communicate openly about how their systems work and why, it lands better than opacity — something Embark is clearly learning the right lessons from in real time. And if you want a feel-good story about an indie game that got everything right without any of the drama, the broader gaming landscape in May 2026 has plenty to dig into.
