ARC Raiders: how matchmaking by playstyle works (update 1.39, August 2026)

Since Live Update 1.39.0 on July 28, 2026, ARC Raiders no longer factors self-defense into the calculation that determines the profile of the Raiders you encounter. If a team opens fire on you and you fight back, that exchange now carries no weight at all: only the engagements you initiate move your playstyle estimate. As of August 9, 2026, this is indeed the rule running on the servers, since the Store Update 1.40.0 from August 4 only brought cosmetics, the first part of the Phantom Targets project, and bug fixes.

This is the third matchmaking adjustment in two months, following 1.36.0 on July 7 and 1.38.0 on July 21. As a result, most of the explanations still circulating, including in French, describe a system that no longer exists. Many even talk about skill-based matchmaking, which Embark formally denies.

Here is the real state of the system as of August 9, 2026: what it measures, what it completely ignores, and the concrete way to steer your matches toward calmer or more intense outings.

The two goals stated by Embark

The studio published a dedicated post on May 20, 2026, Notes on The Matchmaking System, which remains the reference document. It sets two goals for the system. The first is fairness: bringing together players with comparable chances of success, prioritizing teams of the same size. The second is enjoyment: grouping Raiders whose intentions are similar, to limit friction. These two goals are constantly balanced against two technical constraints, wait time and latency.

One point deserves to be stated clearly, because it is regularly reported backwards: ARC Raiders design lead Virgil Watkins explained that the term aggression-based matchmaking used by the community was a misnomer, and that the game practiced neither skill-based matchmaking nor gear-value-based matchmaking. What the system measures are objective actions: who shoots first, what damage is taken, how intense the engagement is. It does not try to guess your intentions.

A slider, not a checkbox

The most common mistake is to imagine two categories of matches, the "friendly" ones and the "aggressive" ones. The system works on a continuous scale. At one end, Raiders who almost never shoot at their fellow players; at the other, those for whom it's their main activity; in between, the vast majority of players.

Two rules govern everything else. First, similarity is likely, never guaranteed: you have a higher chance of running into profiles close to your own, with no certainty whatsoever. Second, your behavior shifts your position on the scale gradually, never all at once. A single match doesn't tip anything: the system looks at trends over time.

An important corollary: there is no such thing as a guaranteed PvP-free match. Embark sums it up bluntly, the surface remains dangerous by design. And there is no in-game indicator: your position on the scale is displayed nowhere, it can only be inferred by observing the behavior of players encountered over a series of outings.

What counts, and what doesn't count at all

The table below consolidates the May 20 post and the July 28 patch notes.

Two practical consequences follow. A single isolated shot won't catapult you into hyper-aggressive matches overnight: the system is explicitly designed not to overreact to a one-off moment. And updates don't reset the counters to zero, your behavioral history carries over across patches.

PvE carries no weight: tear apart machines without a second thought

This is arguably the most useful piece of information for players who chain together Projects and Expeditions. The system only evaluates your interactions with other Raiders. Taking down a Queen or a Matriarch on the Dam Battlegrounds, farming Leapers for a damage objective, clearing out a sector of Ticks in the Buried City: none of that moves your score. So you can play through the game's most violent PvE objectives without fear of later ending up against squads built for combat.

Solo, duo, trio: three independent profiles since 1.36.0

Live Update 1.36.0, rolled out on July 7, 2026, introduced a structural change that's still not widely known: your playstyle is now tracked separately for each mode. You can chain together low-key solo runs meant to complete Projects, then switch to trio to look for a fight, without one bleeding into the other.

Two practical takeaways follow. If you want to finish a long objective in peace, do it in the mode where your profile is calmest, not the one where you spend your evenings hunting for fights. Conversely, keep in mind that a team's profile is an average: bringing along a friend who's very PvP-focused mechanically pulls the whole group toward that end of the scale, since every member contributes to it.

Why your queue times have gotten longer

Update 1.38.0 on July 21, 2026 tightened the algorithm, particularly during low-population windows and in certain regions. Embark owns the trade-off: matchmaking may take a bit longer, because it's working harder to find a better match for mode and playstyle.

If the wait becomes tedious, the levers available are limited but real: play during your region's peak hours rather than in the dead of night, leave crossplay enabled since it widens the pool without influencing the tone of encounters, and favor the most populated formats. None of this changes your profile.

Moving your cursor, methodically

• Never fire first. That's the only truly penalizing move. Retaliating, from now on, costs nothing.
• Skip the third party. Arriving in the middle of an ongoing fight to scoop up the leftovers counts as an initiation, just like a prepared ambush.
• Don't reignite a dead fight. The more serious the confrontation, the more it weighs: finishing off a team that's disengaging costs more than a brief skirmish.
• Think in weeks, not matches. The shift is gradual and deliberately slow.
• Don't expect anything from lightning extractions. Rounds with no real interaction have had their weight reduced: stringing together three-minute runs won't "clean up" a profile.
• The reverse is symmetrical: engage openly and regularly, and your matches will fill up with players looking for the same thing.

What could still change before fall

A word of caution is in order: Embark explicitly presents the removal of defense as a test, whose results will be evaluated based on metrics and player feedback. The behavior described here is therefore that of August 9, 2026, not a rule set in stone. The studio has, in fact, already revised its approach twice in three months on this single parameter.

The schedule for the coming weeks is known: update 1.42 arrives on August 18, 2026, and the studio announced in May a cadence of two major updates per year, the first, Frozen Trail, expected in October 2026 with a new map and an overhaul of progression. A revamp of this scale will very likely affect matchmaking.

In the meantime, the most useful way to read this system remains this: it neither rewards nor punishes a particular playstyle, it simply brings you closer to players who play like you. Choosing a format, sticking with it for a few weeks, and committing to a clear approach produces much more readable matches than constantly switching between silent farming and Raider hunting. And if your runs still feel too tense despite all this, look first at who you're playing with: in a squad, it's the average profile that decides.