Some of 2026’s most-discussed multiplayer shooters share a lot in common with each other, and they owe a debt to one maligned 2021 loot-shooter: Outriders. In both Arc Raiders and Marathon, players venture from a safe hub into hostile areas, shoot enemies, grab loot, and return to safety. These games are built around a loop meant to draw players back repeatedly, and have become hits as a result.
Outriders, developed by People Can Fly and published by Square Enix, released on April 1, 2021. It wasn’t an extraction shooter, but it hit many of the same beats. Players decamped from a hub city into hostile areas where they’d shoot enemies and grab loot before returning to sift through their finds and fine-tune builds.
The stakes were lower than in modern extraction shooters — Outriders didn’t feature PvP — but its feedback loop scratched a similar itch. Ostensibly, the game was story-driven: set in the 22nd century, it focused on humans who flee Earth for a star system some 12 light years away (at least according to number-crunching fans). They attempt to establish a post-Earth colony, only to discover an exoplanet whose native lifeforms don’t want them around. Players also gain space magic superpowers.
Some sci-fi plot beats — cryosleep, planetary anomalies, civil war — tee up a compelling story you’d expect to propel a single-player game. But Outriders “kinda sucked as a single-player game,” according to the source.
The game “absolutely ruled with friends.” Classes were the main draw: when making a new character, players could select from four classes. The Trickster created localized bubbles of Matrix-style bullet time; the Technomancer deployed gadgets like turrets and land mines; the Devastator tanked damage with stone shields; and the Pyromancer wielded flame.
In early areas, players could brute-force their way through mobs as pretty much any class. Later in the game, they’d face uphill battles unless teaming up with friends, and combining classes was key to success. Devastators tanked hits while Tricksters dodged bullets; Pyromancers incinerated crowds, drawing attention from foes who’d then walk into a Technomancer’s traps.
The shooting was “gold-standard,” considering developer People Can Fly’s established pedigree on 2010s shooters like Bulletstorm and Gears of War: Judgement.
Outriders also differentiated itself with an innovative difficulty setting, in which players leveled up “World Tiers” alongside their character. Every time they set out on a mission, they could set the World Tier level from any previously unlocked; the higher the level, the tougher the enemies — and the better the loot. Rather than a typical easy-medium-hard framework, there were 15 tiers of challenge levels.
Outriders also included settings that minimized the slog present in many loot-grind games. Players could tweak settings to automatically source all loot of specific rarity levels or higher, meaning they wouldn’t have to sift through common-tier items.
At launch, Outriders was marred by a rocky release, including server woes, balance issues, and other problems that afflict basically any online game released in the past decade. People Can Fly eventually stabilized the game (and acknowledged the issues with a tongue-in-cheek emote for players).
More than 3 million people played Outriders in its first month, thanks in part to a day-one Xbox Game Pass release, and Square Enix said in an announcement that it was “on track to become the company’s next major franchise.”
That did not pan out. A 2022 expansion, Worldslayer, didn’t attract new players or even encourage most lapsed players to return, according to SteamDB data. Across 2024 and 2025, People Can Fly conducted three rounds of layoffs and suspended two internal projects, one of which was reportedly a sequel to Outriders.
The game may not get a sequel any time soon, if ever. But Outriders thankfully hasn’t gone anywhere. Unlike the ignominious fate that befalls many forgotten multiplayer games, its servers are still online.
Join the conversation