ARC Raiders fixed its crossplay mess fast, but 1.26.0 exposed a live-service problem

Breaking crossplay in a multiplayer game is not a “small known issue.” It is the kind of mistake that instantly turns a content update into damage control, because the moment platform pools get split, the game stops being one community and starts becoming three smaller, worse versions of itself. That is exactly what happened to ARC Raiders after update 1.26.0, and while hotfix 1.26.1 appears to restore crossplay, the whole episode says more about live-service fragility than Embark would probably like.

Here’s the useful version: the April 28 “Riven Tides” update introduced new content, but it also disabled crossplay for many players on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. Reports said the option was missing or stuck off, and matchmaking effectively became platform-locked. Embark acknowledged the issue and recommended a temporary workaround: restoring settings to default. Yes, really. If players wanted crossplay back before the hotfix, the official advice was to nuke their custom settings and start over. Hotfix 1.26.1 then rolled out to restore proper crossplay behavior.

This was not just a menu bug

The easiest way to underplay this story is to frame it as a busted toggle in the options menu. That misses the point. In a modern extraction shooter, crossplay is infrastructure. It affects queue health, squad formation, friend groups, and the basic promise that the game will let people play together regardless of where they bought in.

Once 1.26.0 hit, that promise cracked immediately. Players reported they could no longer re-enable crossplay, which meant the matchmaking pool shrank overnight. For a live-service title, especially one still building and defending its active player base, that is a serious hit. Every split queue makes wait times worse, match quality less consistent, and the whole game feel less populated than it really is. You do not need a population collapse for players to feel like one has started. Perception does the damage first.

That is the part PR language usually glides past. “We are investigating” is fine. “Please reset all settings to default” is where the problem stops sounding minor. A workaround that wipes player preferences is not elegant engineering; it is emergency triage.

The workaround told players exactly how rough this was

Embark at least moved quickly and publicly acknowledged the issue, which is more than some studios manage when a patch detonates. Credit where it is due. But the recommended fix mattered because it showed how awkward the underlying failure was. Asking players to perform a full restore-to-default reset means controller tweaks, accessibility adjustments, graphics preferences, and all the little quality-of-life choices many people spent time dialing in could get wiped just to restore a basic multiplayer function.

That is the sort of workaround players tolerate once. Maybe twice, if the game has a lot of goodwill banked. But it burns trust fast because it forces the user to pay for the patch’s mistake in time and inconvenience. And in an online game, trust is currency. Once players start thinking every major update might break something foundational, they become a lot less eager to log in on patch day and a lot more willing to skip a season entirely.

If there is an uncomfortable question here, it is simple: how did a crossplay-breaking bug get through on a patch that was supposed to expand the game’s reach and momentum? That is the question I would put directly to Embark, because this is not an obscure edge case involving one exotic hardware combination. Crossplay is one of the first things a multiplayer patch should be stress-testing.

Riven Tides should have been about content, not recovery

What makes this sting more is the timing. Update 1.26.0 was not some tiny backend maintenance patch. It was the “Riven Tides” update, a meaningful content beat that added a new map and other changes meant to push ARC Raiders forward. Instead, a big chunk of the conversation got hijacked by broken crossplay and player frustration.

That matters because live-service games do not just compete on content volume. They compete on confidence. A new map is nice. A new enemy is nice. Cosmetics are nice. None of it lands properly if players are spending launch week troubleshooting core systems. Worse, background coverage around the same update suggests some players were already unhappy with balance and progression-related changes. So now Embark is not just asking its community to judge new content on its merits; it is asking them to do that while also forgiving a patch that temporarily fractured matchmaking.

This is the familiar live-service trap: one patch tries to do everything at once, and then one technical failure poisons the reception for the whole package. We have seen versions of this across the industry for years. The exact bug changes, but the pattern does not. The lesson is always the same: players are more forgiving of thin content than unstable fundamentals. A game can survive “not enough stuff.” It struggles much harder with “the basics stopped working.”

Hotfix 1.26.1 fixes the immediate problem, not the bigger one

By all indications, hotfix 1.26.1 restores crossplay properly, which is the outcome players needed fast. Good. That part should not be minimized. The faster a studio repairs a player-base-splitting issue, the less lasting damage it does. Embark deserves credit for not letting this sit.

But a rapid fix does not magically erase the warning sign. What 1.26.0 exposed is that ARC Raiders is still vulnerable to exactly the sort of update instability that can kneecap momentum in this genre. Extraction shooters do not get infinite second chances with casual squads. If a friend group tries to jump in after a patch and finds itself separated by platform, many of those players do not patiently follow Discord instructions and reset menus. They bounce.

The specific thing to watch next is not merely whether crossplay remains stable after 1.26.1. It is whether Embark follows this with cleaner patch reliability and clearer communication about what went wrong. A brief “fixed now” is enough for a hotfix note. It is not enough if the studio wants to reassure players that core multiplayer systems are not one update away from another accidental outage.

There is also a practical player takeaway here. If you reset settings to recover crossplay before 1.26.1 landed, double-check your controls, accessibility options, and performance preferences. The workaround may have solved one problem while quietly recreating five others. That is the kind of cleanup live-service players know too well.

What to watch now

• Whether Embark confirms exactly what caused crossplay to disable in 1.26.0
• Whether 1.26.1 fully restores cross-platform matchmaking without more user-side resets
• Whether the next major patch lands without another basic systems failure
• Whether player sentiment around Riven Tides improves once the technical smoke clears

The verdict is straightforward. Hotfix 1.26.1 is the fix ARC Raiders needed, but this was still a bad miss on one of the most important features in the game. Embark cleaned up the mess quickly. It should not have had to clean up this particular mess at all.