Arc Raiders Is Free All Weekend and Its Biggest Update Ever Just Landed

STOCKHOLM — FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2026 — There is no better time to become a Raider than right now, and I don't say that lightly. ARC Raiders — Embark Studios' extraction shooter that has quietly become one of the few genuine live-service success stories of the last few years — is free to play all weekend across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Steam. And it's not some gutted demo build: the free trial grants access to the full game, including Frozen Trail, the biggest update since launch, which dropped Thursday with a new map, new enemies, and a small mountain of new systems.

The timing is not a coincidence. ARC Raiders released on October 30, 2025, per SteamDB — which means the game is about to turn one, and Embark is throwing itself a birthday party where the gift is you. The trial runs from October 8 at 11:00 CEST through October 12 at 10:00 CEST (that's 1:00 a.m. PT Monday morning, so don't plan on a Sunday-night session), according to Embark's official Steam announcement. That's the entire weekend, on every platform, with cross-play. If you've been watching this one from the sidelines, the sidelines just closed.

01 What's in Frozen Trail

Frozen Trail takes the fight somewhere the Rust Belt has never gone: Pendola Pass, an icy new region that an "unprecedented disruption" has dragged into the ARC's line of fire, per Embark's announcement. New players can get into Pendola Pass immediately if they team up with someone who's already unlocked it — which is a smart little piece of design, because it turns every veteran into a tour guide and every free-weekend newcomer into a plus-one.

The headline addition is the colossal ARC Frigate, a new enemy that sounds exactly as unpleasant as the name suggests, alongside other new ARC enemies. Then there's the Redirection map condition, which shakes up how runs play out; new weapons and gadgets; a Weapon Amplification system; a reworked skill tree; a new Reward Pass progression system; and customizable Raider Outposts, which finally give you a home base worth caring about. Oh, and SteamDB shows a Frozen Trail Collector Set DLC that hit the store on October 8 as well. This is not a patch. This is a relaunch wearing a patch's clothes.

02 The elevator pitch, for the uninitiated

If you missed the last year of ARC Raiders discourse, here's the short version. You play a Raider living in Speranza, a vibrant underground society, in a future Earth ruled on the surface by lethal machines called the ARC. The loop: craft, repair, and upgrade your gear in the safety of your workshop, then head topside to scavenge the remnants of a devastated but beautiful world — solo or in parties of up to three — and try to extract before the machines or your fellow survivors decide you'd make a better loot drop than a teammate. That's the extraction-shooter tension in a nutshell: every good run makes you richer, every bad run makes you paranoid, and the person waving at you might be friendly or might be lining up a headshot.

What set ARC Raiders apart, per ComicBook's coverage, is that it survived. 2026 has been a graveyard for live-service games — studios shutting down, games sunsetting months after launch — and Embark's shooter is still up, still updating, and still growing a year in. In this market, that's not just success, it's a magic trick. The free weekend reads as confidence: Embark thinks if you try it during its biggest update ever, you'll stay.

03 The deal math

Free weekends are marketing, obviously, but this one has teeth because of what's attached to it. The full game is 50% off right now — $19.99 for the base game, $29.99 for the Deluxe Edition — across all digital platforms, per ComicBook. The sale windows differ slightly by store: the discount runs until October 15 on Xbox and Steam, and until October 22 at 11:59 p.m. PT on the PS Store, according to PlayStation LifeStyle and ComicBook. So the play is: try it free all weekend, and if you're hooked, you've got at least a few days of discount left to pull the trigger.

One thing to sort out before you download: the two outlets disagree on whether you need a console subscription for the trial. ComicBook reports that PlayStation Plus and Game Pass subscriptions are not required for the free trial on consoles. PlayStation LifeStyle, meanwhile, says that since it's a multiplayer game, a PS Plus subscription is required to play. That's a meaningful contradiction, so check the store page for your platform before you get your hopes up — the last thing you want is to download 60GB and hit a paywall.

04 How to make the most of it

A few practical notes. First: bring friends. The trial supports cross-play across all three platforms, and Embark specifically calls out that teaming up is the fastest way into Pendola Pass. Second: extraction shooters punish greed — your first five runs should be about learning the maps and getting out alive, not about the legendary loot in the middle of the Frigate's patrol route. Third: the reworked skill tree and new Reward Pass mean even veterans are relearning progression, so nobody has a bigger head start on the new systems than you do. Everyone's a tourist in the snow this weekend.