ARC Raiders Viewer Count Hits New Low As Marathon Starts Running

It might have been inevitable, but as Marathon’s server slam has commenced, ARC Raiders has taken a gut punch in terms of viewership. At the time of writing, ARC Raiders boasted more players than Marathon (on Steam, at least), but viewership for Embark Studios’ extraction adventure had hit an all-time low.

On Twitch, the viewer count was floating at around 22,000 as Marathon got started. That’s the lowest ARC Raiders has been in terms of active, engaged viewers since the game came out in October 2025.

ARC Raiders enjoyed a stunning time in the sun after launching at the end of October. It became regarded as one of the best games of 2025, and in our ARC Raiders review, we dubbed it the most refreshing extraction game ever made.

But almost month after month, the game’s viewer count declines. In December, it dropped -33% compared to November, and in February (this month), -23% from January. Now that a fair chunk of the game’s player base has moved off to see what Marathon has to offer, it’s suffering further, sitting at around 22,500 at the time of writing.

That’s a drop of around 94% since launch, from peak to current.

Funnily enough, Marathon, which comes out in just a week, has managed to trump ARC Raiders in a major way, despite only just entering its first open, public test. It has managed to secure a higher peak viewer count than ARC Raiders ever did, notching up a lofty height of 523,301 viewers, which was secured during Marathon’s gameplay reveal in April 2025.

As this is being written, Marathon boasts more than ten times the viewership of ARC Raiders, as everyone becomes curious to see what’s happening in Bungie’s new extraction game. The gap between the player count (on Steam) was just 30,000 players, too, in ARC Raiders’ favor.

Many believe that Marathon won’t hold a torch to ARC Raiders, which has proven to be overwhelmingly successful since being released in October. It might have some short-term success, but it’s becoming tough for new extraction-based games to really succeed in the increasingly saturated market.

Do you think Marathon can hold its own against ARC Raiders? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord server.

For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Gray Zone Warfare is now a PvE-first shooter