ARC Raiders was delayed because the studio’s other game, Project Discovery, was ready faster

Yesterday, developer Embark Software announced the delay of its upcoming free-to-play shooter ARC Raiders. The team wrote on Twitter it was to “expand the experience,” but apparently that wasn’t the entire story. In a rare act of frankness in this industry the CEO of the developer, Patrick Söderlund, revealed a bit more on the reason why. Embark has been working on several games, and one happened to pull ahead during development. The currently named Project Discovery is a game that is wrapping up faster than ARC Raiders, and will now end up launching first.

With Project Discovery in the lead, ARC Raiders is getting pushed to the side. To be fair, that doesn’t mean ARC will get worse treatment. Embark meant what it said in its message yesterday, and the team working on it now has more time to make it even better. The delay is also giving the studio a bit of breathing room, as it only has so many members to devote to the projects.

“For a young, relatively small studio like ours, releasing two games in short succession would have strained our teams and resources, many of which are shared between the two projects,” Söderlund explains. “As such, we decided to let Project Discovery be our studio’s first game to market, pushing ARC Raiders to a 2023 release. It’s a decision that will also allow us to expand and refine the ARC Raiders experience.”

(Source: Embark Studios). Some concept art for Project Discovery.

Discovering a later release date

Project Discovery, ironically enough, hasn’t had much time in the limelight compared to its sibling. ARC Raiders was unveiled last year during The Game Awards. Naturally, one would think it would come out first. Hell, it actually has a confirmed name. Project Discovery, on the other hand, was only briefly teased in November last year. In a Twitter message, Embark showed off about seven entire seconds of the team-based first-person shooter. It looks pretty. And someone exploded into coins.

We know far less of the game than ARC Raiders, but we’ll certainly see more of Project Discovery soon. It’s hard to say when, but Söderlund is promising that info will come swiftly.

Embark is celebrating 3 years! So what have we accomplished? We’ve grown to more than 250 game makers, we’ve got big plans for the future, and a few projects we are just itching to share. To celebrate, we thought we’d share a glimpse of *another* unannounced game in the works. pic.twitter.com/TdeZQcuvDs

— Embark Studios (@EmbarkStudios) November 9, 2021