Arc Raiders’ executive producer Aleksander Grøndal has opened up about the grueling reality of running a live-service game, admitting that despite anticipating the difficulty, he “wasn’t completely prepared for how hard” the genre truly is. In a candid interview, the Embark Studios executive producer reflected on the title’s meteoric rise at launch and the subsequent struggles that left both the community and the development team exhausted, revealing how the studio’s relentless push to keep pace with players ultimately led to a period of burnout that forced a fundamental rethink of the game’s long-term strategy.
Grøndal’s reflections come as Embark attempts to recalibrate its approach to Arc Raiders, a game that delivered some of the most memorable community interactions of recent years but ultimately faltered under the weight of its own ambition. The developer has been transparent about the fact that it was neither as large nor as well-equipped as heavyweight live-service competitors, yet the team nonetheless attempted to maintain the relentless content cadence that players and the market came to expect.
The Weight of Success
At launch, Arc Raiders earned a devoted following, with Grøndal recalling the world as “beautiful, terrifying, and expansive” and praising the game for providing “some of the best community interactions I’ve had in a game to date.” But that momentum did not sustain itself, and the executive producer was candid about the studio’s miscalculation regarding its own working capacity.
“Transitioning to live service is going to be fucking hard. Everyone said that to me. I’ve even said that to other people. I was mentally prepared for it to be hard—but I wasn’t completely prepared for how hard it was. When you build a game up until launch, you build and you test and you build and you test and you fix things and measure results. So the way that we’ve been building video games was based on that idea—but now the demands of the players are really high, we feel like we really can’t go much faster.”
Aleksander Grøndal, Executive Producer of Arc Raiders
The studio found itself caught in a cycle where players were completing events, uncovering arcs, and exploring maps faster than Embark could produce new content. This created a prolonged period of stale content that ultimately drove a significant drop-off in the player base, a situation Grøndal described as a textbook example of suffering from success.
The Human Cost of Overextension
Perhaps most striking in Grøndal’s account was his willingness to discuss the toll the crunch took on the team itself. He acknowledged that the studio was “super tired” and “super unhappy,” running milestones that were no longer fun or challenging while simultaneously failing to satisfy players who felt the game’s consistency was lacking.
The executive producer did not shy away from sharing a deeply personal story about his own experience with burnout, drawing on his time at EA after shipping a Battlefield title. He explained that pushing himself too hard forced him to take five months of sick leave, a period he described as being “completely broken.”
“It’s super important [to protect people]. I can tell you a personal story. I was burned out. We’d just shipped a Battlefield game [when I was at EA] and I kept pushing so hard that I had to take a break for five months and go on sick leave because I was completely broken. We talk about burnout and it’s obviously bad, but being burned out feels super shitty to be honest. It’s terrible. I don’t recommend it to anyone. Also, it means we lose good people who might be out [of work] for a very long time.”
Aleksander Grøndal, Executive Producer of Arc Raiders
A New Long-Term Vision
The turning point arrived when the team began questioning their own approach, asking why they were pursuing a strategy that was clearly not working. Grøndal noted that the evidence pointed toward the studio producing better work before shipping, prompting a decision to play to their strengths and prioritize quality over sheer volume.
This recalibration means players should expect a more relaxed, deliberate pace of content delivery, though Grøndal insisted the long-term payoff would be a stronger game. He emphasized the importance of creating a framework that fosters creativity while preserving a healthy work-life balance, arguing that well-rested developers ultimately produce better results.
“It’s very important for us to create a framework that allows us to be creative while having a good work-life balance. If we think long-term about this product—not just in small increments but big-picture stuff—we need all of these great people. Those are the people who built Arc Raiders in the first place,” Grøndal concluded, signaling that Embark is now committed to a sustainable path forward for the game.
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