Black Market in ARC Raiders: Players Bypass Progression System
In ARC Raiders, the core gameplay revolves around going to the surface and extracting gear. Finding rare items, materials, and blueprints is the foundation of progression.
As in other extraction shooters, a black market has already emerged in the game: blueprints are being sold for real money.
Blueprints are needed to simplify further loot extraction — this is a basic principle of the genre. Buying ready-made schematics for money breaks this principle: progress loses its meaning, and the gameplay is reduced to firefights with Arcs and other players. PvE elements add context, but for many, they only serve as a way to take loot from rivals. As The Gamer journalist Vaspaan Dastur notes, "if you buy blueprints for real money, you're just fighting for the sake of fighting."
The community is also wary of the possible appearance of an official market. Embark CEO Patrick Söderlund previously said that such an idea is being discussed, but players fear that ARC Raiders will follow the path of Escape from Tarkov — where the value of loot is determined not by gameplay, but by its market value.
