Arc Raiders almost had an auction house like Escape From Tarkov, but Embark nixed it because the game became 'just about coins'

Embark is enjoying the organic trading culture that's emerged in Arc Raiders, but when it expands on trading in the future, it won't be in the form of an Escape From Tarkov-style auction house. That's because, according to design lead Virgil Watkins in an interview with GamesRadar+, they tried it during development and found that it made the game less fun.

"We're not building an auction house or anything like that. Currently, I think it's more leaning into the aspect of social facilitation in that sense of our design."

Technically, it's possible to make money in Arc Raiders as a trader right now, but it's a slow, manual process to group up with customers, load into a match, drop items or blueprints on the ground, and sell those items later. An auction house would cut out the in-person interactions, but Watkins reckons that would undermine Arc Raiders' intentional emphasis on finding items yourself.

"We put a lot of very, very deliberate effort into making the game about the items," Watkins said. "We previously explored and even partially built a trading system like [an auction house]. But what it ended up doing is it turned the game into just being about coins.

"Going in and finding items that are worth the most value, changing them in [for coins], and just buying the things you want. Now you have very little care about going in, exploring the correct location, and searching the right containers, or feeling cool that, 'Oh, finally, I needed this thing, and now I can go do the other thing I wanted to do with it.'"

You need only look at OG extraction shooter Escape From Tarkov, or really any MMO with a player-driven item marketplace, to see what Watkins is talking about. Embark was meticulous in deciding which items can be directly purchased from vendors in Speranza versus what needs to be crafted, and crucially, how often you can rely on vendor goods. It's a valid strategy to buy a high-tier shield and gun to complete your loadout, but in many cases you can only purchase two or three of the same item before a 24-hour cooldown sets in.

That limitation pushes players toward the workshop, which is balanced so that crafting your own stuff is always the better deal anyway. But it takes time and effort to upgrade your workshop to the point that it's capable of producing high-end equipment. Auction houses offer a third choice: buy the guns you want directly from other players instantaneously, based on a market price. It's convenient—so convenient that it becomes the default.

Watkins says Embark's plans for trading are not set in stone, but they'd rather lean into the manual, in-person process that exists right now.

"One thing we really wanted to do, and may still try to do, is: it's fine to trade by just dropping something on the floor, and you can pick it up, but we really want to do an offer where you hold it out and someone actually interacts with the thing in your hand to take it from you," he said. "And it's kind of a small thing, but it feels a lot better than, 'Here's your thing I threw on the floor for you.' So I think it's things on those ends."

Watkins' chat with GamesRadar has produced a handful of interesting Arc Raiders insights this week, including plans for several new maps in 2026 and Embark's view on pre-set loadouts.