Arc Raiders is pausing Expeditions until early 2027 for a major overhaul

Embark Studios is putting Arc Raiders Expeditions on hold after the fifth one wraps up, with the feature not returning until early 2027. The studio cited community feedback pointing to problems with tight departure windows, the reward structure, and poor accessibility for new players — issues it says need more than the incremental fixes it has been applying since launch.

Expedition 5 opens September 8 at 4 am PT and closes September 29, so players sitting on the fence have a clear deadline to jump in. After that, Expeditions go dark. Embark says it will share details on what the reworked system will look like in September. In the meantime, any consecutive buffs already earned carry over through the pause, players who have completed all Expeditions get the Zenith outfit, and partially completed Caravans are replaced with Ermal Vouchers of equal value redeemable for Ermal offers, ARC Parts, firearms trades, or sold for Coin. On top of the Expeditions pause, weekly Trials are also being suspended starting September 22, resuming October 8.

Arc Raiders launched in October 2025 as an extraction shooter and quickly built a dedicated player base, with Expeditions — a prestige-style system that lets players reset their Raiders in exchange for persistent bonuses — serving as the main late-game hook keeping veterans engaged. The game has had a bumpy post-launch road: Embark committed to two major updates per year back in May, and the next one, Frozen Trail, isn't due until October. That update promises a new map and is being billed as the biggest yet, but the slow cadence has already frustrated parts of the community. The second map, Riven Tides, only arrived in April, and the gap between content drops has been a recurring complaint.

Reaction to the Expeditions pause is mixed and leaning sour. On X the response is noticeably more hostile than on the Arc Raiders subreddit, though neither community is celebrating. Players broadly agree the system needs work, but many are skeptical Embark can deliver a fix that satisfies everyone — especially since a portion of the playerbase actually likes Expeditions as they are. One fan summed up the cautious mood: "Removing the only progression system in the game is a risky choice, but if it's not drastically changed in some extremely rewarding way, I'm not sure what else they can do after that." Others are more blunt, with one 400-hour veteran saying the game has been "unplayable in its current state" for months. The community is largely in wait-and-see mode, hoping the October Frozen Trail update and the eventual Expeditions return in 2027 justify the wait.