EA is facing some serious, and spicy, allegations regarding ARC Raiders.
ARC Raiders – Where Have I Heard That Name Before?
ARC Raiders is the latest live service extraction shooter. It follows all the extraction shooter conventions. Unlike Escape From Tarkov, however, it touts a grand science fiction premise with some incredible colorful visuals.
It’s also the latest game from Embark Studios, who also made The Finals. You heard about ARC Raiders because Embark scheduled its playtests around the same time as Bungie’s Marathon. Marathon faces a plagiarism crisis now. But a few months ago, many gamers and content creators talked up how much better ARC Raiders is compared to Marathon.
EA Doesn’t Want To Hear It
Insider Gaming reports that EA has been censoring the name ARC Raiders in the in-game chat for their own games. Several players noticed that when they try to type its name in, it gets censored to ### #######.
Why Is This Happening?
Insider Gaming noticed something that could be relevant. Patrick Söderlund was once EVP and Chief Design Officer at EA. He was also once the CEO at EA DICE. Today, he is CEO of Embark Studios.
Mobygames shows Söderlund’s gameography at EA and DICE goes all the way back to Battlefield 2 in 2005. Söderlund even worked on Battlefield: Bad Company 2 as General Manager for the Xbox 360 version.
Through the years, Söderlund also worked on Mirror’s Edge, Need For Speed, Skate, Burnout, Medal Of Honor, Dead Space, Titanfall, FIFA, Madden NFL, and more. In other words, he stuck it out as one of their longest lasting veterans, and went up the ladder to the highest positions in EA.
Suffice to say, he was one of the most important people at EA. For this reason, it must have hurt the company when Söderlund left in 2018. At the time, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said that he was ‘starting a new chapter’ but did not give a reason. Later, we learned that EA tried to get him to stay with a $ 20 million retention bonus.
Is This Really All About Patrick Söderlund?
We can’t really say for sure if this is about DICE and their former CEO. It is true that Söderlund left before Battlefield V released. That game did not have great pre-release buzz but turned out to be a critical hit. Its sales of 7.3 million units was ultimately a commercial disappointment. But this was only one of a string of Battlefield releases that was not living up to expectations that had been going on for years.
If there’s anything, it could be that EA and Battlefield Studios considers ARC Raiders a serious competitor for Battlefield 6, or the franchise in general. ARC Raiders does not have a release date yet, but they may already anticipate that it could be a threat in their market when it does.
Suffice to say, we’re all anticipating if Söderlund or anyone at DICE speaks up about this situation.
