- Primary Subject: Arc Raiders
- Key Update: Embark Studios revealed it processes more than 100 billion gameplay events per day at peak, using the data to improve matchmaking, detect cheating, balance gameplay, and support development through custom analytics tools.
- Status: Confirmed
- Last Verified: July 1, 2026
- Quick Answer: At Arc Raiders' peak, Embark processed over 100 billion gameplay events daily, tracking everything from bullets and player movement to combat behavior.
Embark Studios has offered a rare look behind the scenes at the technology powering Arc Raiders, revealing the enormous data infrastructure it relies on to monitor player behavior and improve the game.
During a presentation at Nexon's NDC 2026 developer conference, data engineer Mattias Andersson explained that the studio tracks more than 1,000 different gameplay events, collecting information ranging from player movement and bullet trajectories to weapon impacts and combat encounters.
At Arc Raiders' peak, that system was processing more than 100 billion gameplay events every day, producing roughly 30 terabytes of data daily, with the information becoming available for analysis in under two seconds.
Embark's highest data loads came during Arc Raiders' peak popularity between late 2025 and early 2026, when the game regularly surpassed 400,000 concurrent Steam players.
Why Does Embark Track Every Bullet And Player Action?
The data isn't collected just for the sake of statistics, with Embark using it to support everything from cheat detection and bug tracking to weapon balancing and gameplay analysis.
Tracking every shot and its impact point gives the developers a way to investigate impossible bullet paths, abnormal player movement, and other irregularities that are often difficult to catch through player reports.
The same data also helps Embark understand player behavior by analyzing how different people approach combat, such as who typically fires first in an encounter, instead of relying solely on traditional skill-based matchmaking.
The data helps distinguish highly aggressive players from those who usually avoid starting fights, allowing matches to better reflect individual playstyles instead of relying only on skill or gear.
Handling that amount of information without affecting gameplay required Embark to build its own lightweight data pipeline.
Andersson explained that gameplay servers batch events into small packets before sending them through a separate analytics system, allowing data collection to remain isolated from the game's core performance.
Once a match ends, the collected data is compressed into smaller, more efficient files instead of being stored in a massive, always-running database, helping reduce operating costs and system overhead.
Embark has also created a range of internal tools that allow other teams to make use of the data.
Developers and designers can replay entire matches through custom map replay tools, visualize player movement with heatmaps, review death locations, inspect server logs, and even overlay player activity directly inside Unreal Engine while designing maps.
According to Andersson, the aim is to make this data available to everyone working on the game, not just analysts, so designers, programmers, and other teams can make decisions based on how players actually behave.
One of the biggest takeaways from the project, according to Andersson, was that building an effective analytics platform doesn't necessarily require adopting every new industry trend.
Embark focused on keeping its technology stack simple, creating custom solutions where needed, and ensuring different teams could access data in whatever format worked best for their jobs.
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