Arc Raiders' 2.0 Update and 'Spider-Man' Grappling Hook Drive Player Count to Reach 7-Month High

The new Arc Raiders 2.0 update has triggered a seven-month high for its concurrent player count on Steam as fans show up for its "Spider-Man" grappling hook, a new map, a free weekend, and more.

Embark's once-viral extraction experience has had a rough few months. As the studio slowed down updates and vowed to rework its divisive Expedition prestige system, Arc Raiders players have largely left it behind, hoping to one day return to Speranza should more enticing updates arrive.

After reaching an all-time peak of nearly 500,000 players on Steam (via SteamDB), it's consistently struggled to reach more than 35,000 players on PC since July. It was a fall from grace that's left fans missing the honeymoon phase, but the Frozen Trail update, which launched two days ago, October 8, across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, has almost immediately brought back some of that hype.

In September, Arc Raiders reached a player count low of just 10,000 …