Despite recent controversies, Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins says Embark’s thinking about using AI going forward hasn’t changed, but they still don’t plan to “open the floodgates.”
Since its release at the end of 2025, Arc Raiders has quickly become one of the biggest multiplayer games around, recently hitting 12 million players. It’s managed to take a niche genre like an extraction shooter and bring it to the mainstream, earning rave reviews along the way.
However, despite its success, its use of AI to create many of the voicelines heard in-game sparked controversy. The game uses a text-to-speech system that was originally trained by humans, which then produces the callouts you hear from other raiders during a run.
While it’s clearly done little to hurt the shooter’s sales, it has left a bad taste in some players’ mouths. But despite the backlash, it appears that Embark Studios doesn’t plan on changing its approach.
Arc Raiders boss says success hasn’t “changed our outlook” on AI
In an interview with PCGamesN, design director Virgil Watkins was asked if the AI controversy, paired with Arc Raiders’ success, has altered how they will use AI going forward.
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s fallen any way or the other,” he replied. “As with all the tools we build or make use of, [it comes down to], ‘Does it ultimately let us do something we couldn’t before, or is it an added [bonus] to the game?'”
“With the TTS stuff, I think it was an unlock for us to be able to do voiced characters when we, at the time, did not have the capacity to do so.”
He went on to say that the impressive sales give the devs “different affordances,” and this will lead to a review on “how or why we do that.” However, the team’s overall approach to AI hasn’t changed.
“But I don’t think it’s been like, ‘Oh, well, let’s open the floodgates for all types of AI or even AI-adjacent tools.’ So no, I don’t think it’s changed our outlook on that,” he continued, before adding:
“It is still very much in the vein of building what we can, the best we can. And a lot of it is just that avenue of exploring emerging tech and building our own tools for things, because that’s what enabled us to build a lot of this with the team the size we have. But obviously we’re not deaf to the concerns that are out there for it.”
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