ARC Raiders was one of 2025’s notable games, but it was not officially tied for Game of the Year. It won Best Multiplayer Game at The Game Awards 2025; Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won the event’s Game of the Year award. Calling ARC Raiders the year’s best is therefore an editorial opinion, not an established overall award result.
Did ARC Raiders win Game of the Year?
No. At The Game Awards 2025, ARC Raiders won Best Multiplayer Game, while Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 won Game of the Year, according to Engadget’s winners report. These are distinct categories; the multiplayer award does not make ARC Raiders a co-winner of the overall GOTY award.
Why do some people call it the best game of 2025?
“Best game” depends on the publication, writer, and criteria. A SUPERJUMP feature includes contributor Ignas Vieversys’s personal choice: “I know my populist choice for 2025 GOTY might send me straight into SUPERJUMP’s purgatory (where game writers like myself are strapped in for the video game equivalent of Clockwork Orange’s chair sequence, with footage of Indie: The Movie beamed right into our retinas), but I have to go for Arc Raiders, AI-related discourse be damned.” That is one writer’s preference, not an award result or a publication-wide consensus.
Other editorial rankings differ. Dexerto’s 2025 list placed ARC Raiders third, behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Hades II. That list and Vieversys’s personal pick reflect different editorial judgments; neither establishes a universal ranking or a tie.
#1 Best Overall
What kind of game is ARC Raiders?
ARC Raiders is a multiplayer extraction adventure from Embark Studios, released October 30, 2025, according to its Steam store page. Set on a future Earth threatened by mechanized ARC machines, it sends players to the surface to scavenge and extract loot while contending with both hostile machines and other players. Steam describes solo play and squads of up to three.
That extraction-focused, multiplayer design helps explain why it received the Best Multiplayer Game award. It also means that calling it “best” may depend on whether a reader values tense cooperative or competitive encounters, rather than the qualities measured by an overall GOTY award.
Rank #2
- MLB The Show 26 Full Game on PlayStation 5
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What platforms is ARC Raiders on?
Embark’s official ARC Raiders site lists links to Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and GeForce NOW, and describes cross-platform social play. Storefront availability can change, so check the official site for current platform information.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How should you interpret its reception?
Steam’s listing showed 81% positive English-language reviews across 200,222 reviews and 57% positive recent reviews across 2,865 reviews when accessed October 7, 2026. Those are changeable Steam user-review proportions, not critic scores or a survey of all players. They offer a snapshot of responses on that platform, but do not prove an overall “best game” tie.
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Rank #3
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The clearest answer is to distinguish the claims: ARC Raiders won a major multiplayer category and earned a personal GOTY endorsement from a SUPERJUMP contributor, while another 2025 editorial list ranked it third. The Game Awards’ overall GOTY winner was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Quick Recap
Best Value
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