Arc Raiders Dev Defends Use Of AI Yet Again

Arc Raiders was a big hit in 2025, though some players criticized its use of AI-generated voices. Patrick Söderlund, who leads the game’s developer, Embark, recently explained that the studio uses AI to speed up development and ultimately create higher-quality games.

He also disagreed with the suggestion that using AI in game development would cause job losses at Embark.

Our use of AI isn’t about cutting jobs or replacing people like voice actors,” explained Söderlund to GamesBeat. “It’s about helping developers and ultimately creating a better experience for players. It’s a complex topic, and we need to understand how it can be a valuable tool for everyone involved.

To bring the characters in Arc Raiders to life, Embark used a unique voice acting process. They recorded actors’ voices and then used AI to create a system that could generate new lines of dialogue in those same voices. This meant characters could respond to a wide range of in-game situations without requiring the actors to return for additional recording sessions.

It wasn’t unexpected that Arc Raiders used a text-to-speech system, since Embark’s previous game, The Finals, also utilized this technology. However, Arc Raiders proved far more popular than The Finals, leading another voice actor to ask Embark to reconsider using real actors in the studio.

Actor Neil Newbon expressed concern that using AI to replicate and alter someone’s voice without recording their original performance is problematic.

Arrowhead Game Studio’s CEO, Shams Jorjani, asked people to think carefully about all sides of the issue.

Jorjani has noticed a tendency for people to quickly form strong opinions, but he believes Arc Raiders’ use of AI is a positive example. He stated it’s a compelling implementation that genuinely improves the gaming experience.

Embark has repeatedly explained its use of AI in game development, clarifying that they don’t intend to replace actors entirely. They see combining real voice recordings with AI-generated audio as a way to speed up development, not as a final solution.

I jumped into Arc Raiders when it first came out, right between the latest Battlefield and Call of Duty releases, and it blew up! It cost forty bucks, but it had a massive launch. What’s really cool is that it’s still super popular – I see it in Steam’s top games months later. The other day, almost 466,000 of us were playing at the same time, which is seriously close to its all-time peak of around 482,000. It’s been a really solid experience!

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2026-01-05 18:40