Embark Studios put real voice actors back into Arc Raiders. The Stockholm studio re-recorded the game's quest dialogue after its AI-generated lines drew a wave of player anger. Executive Producer Aleksander Grøndal confirmed the change in a Nov. 2 interview with PC Gamer1.
"There was some really fair criticism in there," Grøndal said. "There's no point in trying to be defensive, it's just what's best for the game"1. He added that the studio expected pushback, having lived through a similar reaction to its earlier shooter, The Finals.
What players heard first
Arc Raiders launched Oct. 30, 2025, as an extraction shooter from Embark and its parent, Nexon. Players bought in fast. The game crossed 4 million copies within two weeks, and concurrent players topped 700,000 across every platform by Nov. 105.
The same week, a different number landed. Eurogamer reviewed Arc Raiders and gave it two stars out of five, the game's lowest mainstream score2. Critic Rick Lane called the AI-generated voice lines "aggressively mediocre and a stain on the experience".
Lane went further on the characters players actually talk to. He wrote that "their voices are flat and emotionally blunted, aside from the occasional bizarre inflection that reveals their robotic roots"2. The score, and that line, spread fast among players already annoyed by the dialogue.
Slandered@SlanderedOneIs it wrong to dock a game for using AI voices? I'm strongly against AI so my answer is no but curious to hear other people's thoughts.
Eurogamer gave Arc Raiders a 4/10 in large part because "AI voices compromise Arc Raiders" ethically and artistically. The voices are all… https://t.co/5wrdhUb30b
Why Embark reached for AI voices
Arc Raiders carries two kinds of voice work. Quest dialogue, the lines traders speak when a player stops to talk, used to run on AI-generated speech. The ping system, the quick voice callouts a player fires off in a firefight, still does1.
Audio Director Bence Pajor explained how the work happens. "The actors have been here all along," Pajor said. "But we haven't always used them to record the actual thing you're going to hear"1.
The team used real actors' voices to build training data first. Then it tried lines against that data, before any human stepped into a booth for the final take. "To record the training data for the ping system becomes too impractical to record every possible version of something," Pajor said1. Design Director Virgil Watkins drew a sharper line for Kotaku: "Arc Raiders in no way uses generative AI whatsoever"3.
Betting bigger on AI
Nexon's leadership sees the backlash as a cost of doing business in 2026. President and CEO Junghun Lee defended the approach to reporters the week the review landed.
"First of all, I think it's important to assume that every game company is now using AI," Lee said3. He argued the technology speeds up both production and the live updates a hit game needs to keep running.
Lee has company. A State of the Game Industry survey found 52 percent of studios already build with generative AI tools somewhere in their pipeline6. The remaining 48 percent still lean on older methods. Krafton, a rival publisher, has pitched an AI-first plan backed by roughly $70 million.
52 percent of surveyed game studios already build with generative AI
Share of studios in a State of the Game Industry survey using generative AI tools somewhere in their pipeline, reported Nov. 13, 2025
The magenta slice is the share of surveyed studios already building with generative AI tools; the gray slice is the remaining studios.
Source: Inverse [6]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Studios using generative AI | 52% |
| The remaining studios | 48% |
| Whole | 100% |
The case against
Voice actors fought this exact fight before Arc Raiders existed. SAG-AFTRA's videogame members struck for 11 months, from July 2024 to June 2025, over how studios could use their voices with AI7. A spokesperson for the game companies, Audrey Cooling, said the deal that ended it set "transparency, consent and compensation for the use of digital replicas in games".
Embark is a Swedish studio outside that American union's contract. Players reading Lane's review saw the same pattern anyway. A line-reading machine stood in for the actor a studio already paid to record. Strange Scaffold's Xalavier Nelson Jr. called the industry's cost argument a "skill issue." His own studio ships roughly three games a year with casts recorded fully by hand6.
What changed, and what stayed
Embark's answer arrived almost a year after the review. Chief Creative Officer Stefan Strandberg told PC Gamer where the studio now draws the line. "We are not in the industry of replacing actors," he said, "actually quite the opposite we should celebrate the performance and give them more space"1.
The quest lines traders speak now feature real actors throughout, Grøndal and Pajor confirmed1. Its ping system keeps AI voices instead. A player can trigger thousands of callout combos, far more than a fixed script could cover by hand.
CEO Patrick Söderlund calls the fix part of a plan already underway. "The community of raiders has been part of this journey from the start, and their ideas and enthusiasm continue to guide where the game goes next," he said in January, as Nexon logged Arc Raiders past 12.4 million units sold and a record 960,000 concurrent players4.
Arc Raiders' concurrent players grow 37 percent through its AI backlash
Highest concurrent players across all platforms, Nov. 10, 2025 to Jan. 13, 2026
Each column is the highest concurrent-player count Nexon reported on that date; the second column counts every platform nine weeks after the first, past the Eurogamer review and the player anger that followed it.
Sources: Business Wire [4]; PC Gamer [5]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Nov. 10, 2025 | 700,000 |
| Jan. 13, 2026 | 960,000 |
What to do
Treat a voice actor's contract the way Embark says it treats one. Pay actors for every training hour, and for every line a studio ships. Say in plain words which lines a machine reads and which a person recorded, the distinction Watkins drew for Arc Raiders.
Expect a reviewer to test that distinction the way Lane did. A studio that struggles to explain its own split between training data and shipped dialogue will face hard questions. Embark answered that question a year late.
By the numbers
- 700,000: concurrent players across every platform nine days after Arc Raiders' launch, before the AI voice backlash peaked5.
- 960,000: the record concurrent-player count Nexon logged in January 2026, after the backlash4.
- 2 out of 5: Eurogamer's review score for the game, citing its AI-generated dialogue among the reasons2.
- 52 percent: the share of surveyed game studios already using generative AI tools in their pipeline6.
- 11 months: how long SAG-AFTRA's videogame voice actors struck over AI use in games, from July 2024 to June 20257.
- $70 million: Krafton's stated investment behind its "AI first" plan for game production6.
What to watch
Watch whether Embark extends human recording into the ping system, the harder half of Pajor's job. Check Nexon's next earnings call for whether concurrent players hold near 960,000 now that the voices have changed. A rising count would answer Lee's bet on AI with proof of its own.
Sources
- Elie Gould, "'There was some really fair criticism': Arc Raiders' devs understand why players were so upset about its AI use but say that it was 'too impractical to record' every voice line," PC Gamer, Nov. 2, 2026, https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/there-was-some-really-fair-criticism-arc-raiders-devs-understand-why-players-were-so-upset-about-its-ai-use-but-admit-that-it-was-too-impractical-to-record-every-voice-line/
- Rick Lane, "Arc Raiders review," Eurogamer, Nov. 10, 2025, https://www.eurogamer.net/arc-raiders-review
- Ethan Gach, "Arc Raiders Publisher Says Generative AI Is A Matter Of Survival," Kotaku, Nov. 12, 2025, https://kotaku.com/arc-raiders-gen-ai-nexon-eurogamer-voices-2000643436
- Nexon Co., Ltd., "Nexon Reports ARC Raiders Passes 12.4-Million-Unit Milestone," Business Wire, Jan. 13, 2026, https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260112348007/en/Nexon-Reports-ARC-Raiders-Passes-12.4-Million-Unit-Milestone
- PC Gamer Staff, "Arc Raiders sells 4 million copies, making it 'the most successful global launch in Nexon's history'," PC Gamer, Nov. 11, 2025, https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/arc-raiders-sells-4-million-copies-making-it-the-most-successful-global-launch-in-nexons-history/
- Robin Bea, "Arc Raiders' Use Of AI Voices Isn't As Normal As Some Would Have You Believe," Inverse, Nov. 13, 2025, https://www.inverse.com/gaming/arc-raiders-ai-voice-controversy-nexon-ceo-every-video-game
- Andy Chalk, "Videogame voice actors strike 'suspended' following agreement with game companies: 'All SAG-AFTRA members are instructed to return to work'," PC Gamer, June 11, 2025, https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/videogame-voice-actors-strike-suspended-following-agreement-with-game-companies-all-sag-aftra-members-are-instructed-to-return-to-work/
