[STEAM] ARC Raiders bosses double down on using AI in game dev: ‘More time innovating; less time writing code’

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ARC Raiders dev Embark Studios and its owner Nexon won't be saying goodbye to using AI tools in game dev any time soon. Far from it.

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from Nexon released yesterday, the minds behind the massively successful ARC Raiders and The Finals are fully embracing using AI in game development. Why? Because money, of course. And Nexon says it will be the best and most efficient at using AI along the way.

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Screenshot by Destructoid "Every company has a plan; most will get it wrong," said Embark CEO and Nexon executive chairman Patrick Söderlund in the presentation. "They’re committing big, investments in tools – but tools won’t help because they’ve misread the challenge. AI may be a race, but the winners won’t be the first movers – the winners will be the ones who understood the challenge. Think of game development as auto mechanics. The tools are available to everyone, but not everyone has the knowledge and experience to use them."

The slideshow, spotted by

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, is addressed to shareholders in Nexon. So, in the end, it's all about how the company can be efficient and profitable, but that's nothing new, according to Nexon president and CEO Junghun Lee.

"Nexon has used AI tools for some time and we’re quickly moving past the tool level – to applying context to everything we do," Lee said.

The presentation states that Nexon will be using an AI initiative called Mono Lake, which "makes the intelligence available across everything we build and operate – every developer, every live ops team, every product decision has access to the base of information we’ve accumulated over decades."

And with this, the powers of AI will be used as tools by devs to help create games efficiently and quickly, according to Nexon. But within the presentation, Lee had a very unique way of describe the hit extraction shooter that found wide appeal at the end of 2025 while also getting heat for using AI voices instead of voice actors.

"Beyond the breakaway commercial success, ARC Raiders is a ******* Horse – a gift that contains a
shift in the mindset about how technology frees developers and live service teams to spend more time thinking and less time typing," Lee said. "More time innovating; less time writing code. It changes how people work. The tools they use, how fast they can move, what they can accomplish."

In attempts to assuage worries about AI replacing actual devs, however, Lee was quick to point out that "what goes into our games – the creative content our players actually experience – [...] remains the work of our developers."

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Image via Embark Studios "Our methodology doesn’t replace creative people, it frees them to create, with context," Lee said. And yet, in the very same presentation, former EA executive Söderlund boasted about ARC Raiders and The Finals as "two games, built with significantly fewer people, at a fraction of the cost you’d expect for a AAA game."

Fewer people, but more AI, is the message they're going with for those who hold shares in the company, I guess. Take from that what you will.

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