Arc Raiders was one of the most successful games of 2025, but it was also criticized for its use of an AI-based text-to-speech system. Patrick Söderlund, head of Arc Raiders studio Embark, further shed light on the situation, saying that the studio's goal in introducing AI into the development process is to make better games more efficiently.
He also pushed back against the idea that using AI systems to develop games would lead to job losses at Embark.
“We're not using AI to eliminate the need to hire people or replace people or roles or voice actors,” Söderlund told GamesBeat. “People need to take a step back and understand what it is and how it can be a huge help to developers and a huge benefit to players. I realize this is a complex subject and discussion.”
In the case of Arc Raiders, Embark hired actors to record voice lines and incorporated them into a generative text-to-speech system, allowing game characters to speak in the actors' voices while dealing with various situations that could occur in the game. The human actors themselves didn't have to go back to the studio to record new lines because the AI-based system created them.
Embark's last game, The Finals, used a similar text-to-speech program, so it came as no surprise to anyone that Ark Raiders used such a system. However, Ark Raiders was a much bigger success than The Final, and other voice actors asked Embark to bring the actors back to the studio.
Actor Neil Newbon said, “If you don't record the lines in the first place and you're going to use AI to take someone's voice and manipulate it to do what you want, that's a problem.”
Shams Jorjani, CEO of Helldivers Studio Arrowhead, appealed to people to consider the nuances and perspectives of this issue.
Jorjani said he has observed that people tend to “jump to extreme interpretations,” but said of the way Arc Raiders implements AI, “this is a very interesting use case that actually makes the game better.”
Embark has already defended its choice to use an AI system multiple times, stating that “making a game without actors is not the end goal,” and that the combination of recorded audio and audio generated via TTS tools only accelerated the process.
Arc Raiders launched between Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, making the $40 game a big debut. It has also enjoyed sustained popularity, remaining on Steam's most-played charts several months after its release. In fact, the 24-hour peak concurrent users of 466,372 is only about 3% of the game's all-time high of 481,966 players on Steam.
