Yes — Arc Raiders does have aggression-based matchmaking. Embark Studios CEO Patrick Söderlund officially confirmed the system in January 2026, ending months of community speculation about why some players were landing in calm, cooperative lobbies while others were getting gunned down on sight every single raid.
But the reality of how it works is more nuanced than most players think. It’s not a simple on/off switch between peaceful and hostile lobbies. Here’s everything you need to know about Arc Raiders’ matchmaking system as of April 2026, straight from the developers themselves.
What Is Aggression-Based Matchmaking in Arc Raiders?
Aggression-based matchmaking (often abbreviated as ABMM by the community) is Arc Raiders’ method of pairing players together based on their behavioral tendencies in-game — specifically, whether they lean toward PvP combat or PvE exploration.
In most multiplayer shooters, matchmaking is governed by skill. Your kill/death ratio, win rate, or some hidden MMR score determines who you play with. Arc Raiders takes a different approach entirely. Rather than asking “how good are you?”, its system asks “what kind of player are you?”
Embark CEO Patrick Söderlund explained that Arc Raiders doesn’t take elements like K/D ratio and rankings into account. Instead, the game studies players’ behaviors and matches them with other players with similar patterns of gameplay. If players ignore other players in a lobby and head straight for the objective, they’re likely to match with other players who lean towards PvE combat.
This makes Arc Raiders one of the few extraction shooters on the market to use behavior-based matchmaking as a core pillar of its lobby system, putting it in a very different category from games like Escape from Tarkov or Hunt: Showdown.
When Was It Confirmed?
For weeks after Arc Raiders’ launch in late October 2025, players had been theorizing about whether the game used some form of aggression-based sorting. Community threads on Steam and Reddit filled up with anecdotal tests — players running pacifist sessions for several raids and reporting noticeably calmer lobbies afterward.
Embark stayed quiet on the topic for a while, which only added fuel to the debate.
The definitive confirmation came when Söderlund sat down for a live gameplay session with GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi in early January 2026. Playing Arc Raiders in real time, Söderlund laid out the matchmaking system explicitly for the first time: “Obviously, first it’s skill-based, of course. Then you have solos, duos, and trios. And then also, since a week ago or so, we introduced a system where we also matchmake based on how prone you are to PvP or PvE.”
When Takahashi mentioned that a player had asked him about aggression-based matchmaking, Söderlund replied directly: “That’s exactly what it is.”
The statement spread rapidly across the Arc Raiders community, with reactions ranging from relief to outrage, depending on which side of the PvP/PvE fence players sat on.
How Does It Actually Work?
Here’s where things get interesting — and where a lot of players have gotten the wrong idea.
It’s Not Binary
One of the most important clarifications came from Arc Raiders’ design lead, Virgil Watkins, who spoke with GamesRadar shortly after Söderlund’s confirmation.
Watkins explained: “It’s a bit of a misnomer calling it aggression-based, and it is something we’re going to keep tuning, but people aren’t far off in how they think it works.” He went on to clarify that there is no binary split between aggressive lobbies and pacifist lobbies, and that there will always be a degree of mixing: “If you really want to try to adjust and play in a bit of a less hostile environment, you are afforded (a way) to do so. But it should be clear to people, I hope, that it’s also not binary. Obviously you can tell it’s weighted one way or the other, but it’s never like, you are now only with PvE players, you are now only with PvP players. It’s a weighted system.”
So don’t expect to get sorted into a purely peaceful lobby just by avoiding combat for a few runs. You’ll still encounter aggressive players — just statistically fewer of them.
The Matchmaking Priority Order
According to Söderlund, the matchmaking algorithm filters players in a specific priority order: first by skill level as the baseline check, then by squad size to keep solos, duos, and trios separated, and finally by PvP/PvE behavior — the aggression layer that sets Arc Raiders apart.
However, there’s a notable contradiction between the CEO and the design lead on this point. Söderlund described skill-based matchmaking as the primary layer, but Watkins — who is directly responsible for the game’s design systems — flatly denied that any form of SBMM exists in Arc Raiders. The honest answer is that the full picture remains somewhat unclear, and Embark itself has acknowledged the system is still evolving.
Watkins confirmed: “And we don’t do anything like skill-based matchmaking or gear-based matchmaking… It’s really just this kind of rating system we have that maneuvers, and we’re just going to keep monitoring match health and player response, and tune it from there.”
The System Doesn’t Assume Intent
A key technical limitation — and an important one to understand — is that the system tracks actions, not reasons.
Watkins noted: “If I’m a very bad player and you’re a good player, and I’m the aggressor and I just miss all my shots and you defend yourself, the game doesn’t know what the intent was. They just saw you kill me because I’m terrible.” This means the system doesn’t make value or moral judgments — it simply registers whether or not a player is engaging in PvP.
What this means practically: defending yourself counts the same as attacking. The system is tracking your engagement with PvP, not your motivations behind it.
Post-Match Surveys Don’t Affect Matchmaking
Embark also made it clear that the end-of-round surveys players are prompted to fill out after each match have no bearing on matchmaking. As Watkins explained: “Those are just to help us gauge how players felt about the round. They have no mechanical change on what happens to you. It is solely based on your actions in the round.”
Can Players Manipulate the System?
Yes — and this has become one of the most controversial aspects of the matchmaking design.
Players discovered that aggressive raiders can easily force the game to place them into friendly, PvE-centered lobbies by simply using a free loadout for a few games and not shooting anyone. Söderlund acknowledged this in an interview with IGN, saying: “I don’t know the answer to that. It’s obviously something that we are and need to continue to monitor. That’s not the intent of the game’s design or our ambition to segment the game in that aspect.”
The reverse is equally true. Peaceful players who want more action can deliberately engage in more PvP over several sessions to shift toward higher-aggression lobbies.
Community testing has also revealed that even looting a player’s body — without having killed them yourself — may influence your aggression score, bumping you back up in the system even after a streak of peaceful raids.
How Do You Lower Your Aggression Score?
If you’re stuck in high-aggression lobbies and want a calmer experience, the path forward requires patience and sustained behavioral change. There’s no instant reset.
The most effective approach is to play consecutive raids focused entirely on PvE: fight ARC robots, complete objectives, loot containers, and extract — all without initiating combat against other players. Even if someone shoots at you, try to disengage rather than fight back (though this is obviously easier said than done).
Some community members have noted that going into sessions without shooting anyone for a stretch of raids — around eight to ten sessions — tends to shift lobbies noticeably toward more cooperative, PvE-focused experiences.
Keep in mind that this transition is gradual. Don’t expect a single pacifist run to undo a history of aggressive play. The system weighs your behavior over time, meaning one bad session won’t destroy your progress but one good session also won’t fix everything.
You can also check out our guide on Where to Find Sentinel Firing Core in Arc Raiders to make your PvE-focused runs more productive — farming high-value materials while keeping your aggression score low is the most efficient way to play if you prefer cooperative gameplay.
Community Reaction: Is It Good or Bad?
The community has been deeply divided on this system, and the debate has not quieted down months after the initial confirmation.
Those who support it argue that ABMM is exactly what extraction shooters need. The genre has historically struggled with an aggressive “kill on sight” culture that alienates cooperative or casual players. By separating aggressive and passive players, Embark enables two distinct communities to enjoy the same game — just in different versions of its lobbies.
As PC Gamer noted, aggression-based matchmaking is essentially an automated version of what players in older MMOs did manually — choosing servers with strict PvP rules or roleplaying requirements. The system automates a human curation process that used to require server admins.
Critics of the system argue that it undermines the game’s core tension and makes progression feel hollow.
Steam users have pointed out that when placed in “friendly lobbies,” the experience transforms into a near-PvE-only mode: “People run around with weapons holstered, constantly use emotes and voice chat, are super friendly and helpful and very rarely shoot anyone, even when they are at their most vulnerable. You essentially cannot die. This completely dilutes any real challenge.”
The concern is that the system enables a certain kind of cheese: highly skilled PvP players can farm gear in peaceful lobbies and then switch back to aggressive play when it suits them, creating an asymmetric advantage that the system was never intended to produce.
What Does Embark Plan to Do About It?
Embark has been transparent that the matchmaking system will continue to evolve. The CEO himself acknowledged it is “not an exact science.”
Söderlund told IGN: “All systems, when it relates to matchmaking, will undergo changes continuously. It’s not as simple as, ‘Are you someone that shoots a lot of people or not?’ It is far more sophisticated than that. The PvP, PvE aspect of it is a small portion of it.”
The January 2026 Headwinds update introduced a new matchmaking option — Solos vs Squads for level 40+ players — demonstrating that Embark is actively experimenting with how players are grouped. Monthly content updates through at least April 2026 have continued to address balance and player behavior concerns, and Embark has indicated that more matchmaking refinements are on the way as they gather more behavioral data from the player base.
Arc Raiders Matchmaking: Key Takeaways
Here’s a quick summary of what we know about Arc Raiders’ aggression-based matchmaking as of April 2026:
- Yes, it exists. Confirmed directly by Embark CEO Patrick Söderlund in January 2026.
- It’s behavior-based, not skill-based. The system tracks your PvP/PvE tendencies over time, not your raw skill level.
- It is not binary. You will never be placed in a lobby that is exclusively PvP or exclusively PvE. It’s a weighted system that shifts probabilities.
- It can be gamed. Players can manipulate their aggression score by temporarily changing their playstyle, though Embark considers this unintended behavior.
- Post-match surveys don’t matter. Only your in-game actions influence your matchmaking placement.
- The system is still evolving. Embark has committed to continuous tuning as they gather more data.
Final Verdict
Arc Raiders’ aggression-based matchmaking is a bold and genuinely innovative approach to one of the hardest problems in extraction shooter design: how do you make a game welcoming to casual and PvE-focused players without stripping away the tension that makes the genre exciting in the first place?
Embark’s answer — match people by behavior, not just by skill — is clever in theory and largely effective in practice. It’s not perfect. The system can be exploited, it doesn’t read intent, and its exact mechanics remain partially opaque even after multiple rounds of developer clarification.
But the broader principle is sound: if you play aggressively, you should face aggressive opponents. If you prefer PvE, your lobbies should reflect that. As live-service games continue to compete for attention — a space where even Marvel Rivals is pushing into new game modes and formats — behavior-aware matchmaking could become a template other developers borrow from Arc Raiders for years to come.
The system will keep getting tuned. For now, your best strategy is simple: play the game the way you actually want to play it, and the matchmaking will do its best to find you a lobby that matches.
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