Arc Raiders, one of our most anticipated games of 2025, is free for all in its final pre-release playtest this weekend

We covered this back in September, but an awful lot of people are really looking forward to Arc Raiders and so I reckon it's worth a reminder: The open-to-all Arc Raiders server slam playtest is now live, giving everyone a chance to dive in for the weekend ahead of its full release on October 30.

Game servers for big, anticipated new releases have a nasty tendency of crumbling under the load of a big launch day, as Dune: Awakening reminded us earlier this year. That's where a server slam—a stress test with a catchier name—comes in: The goal is to hammer the infrastructure as hard as possible to see how it holds up. It's not a guarantee of a smooth-sailing launch day (Dune: Awakening also reminded us of that), but it's at least an attempt, and also a way of rooting out any overlooked issues that might trigger surprise headaches.

For you, though, what it is, is three days of playtime with one of the games we're looking forward to the most in 2025: PC Gamer shooterguy Morgan Park said back in April that Arc Raiders "is a much more exciting extraction shooter than Marathon," which may or may not have played a role in Marathon's delay to some indefinite future date just a few months later. Jake Tucker, also a fan of the genre, had similar thoughts following a November 2024 hands-on session, declaring that "Arc Raiders could be something very special indeed."

The Arc Raiders server slam includes the Dam Battlegrounds map, "a broken landscape of flooded lowlands and forgotten structures," playable solo or in a squad, and "a selection of early quests" offered by the Traders of Speranza, the in-game merchants. Basic crafting stations will be available but upgrades won't be possible during the playtest, and likewise some higher-end weapons, gear, and blueprints will be locked for the test as well.

As a little extra incentive, beyond just free game for the weekend, everyone who takes part in the server slam will be able to claim the exclusive Server Slammer backpack when Arc Raiders goes live on October 30.

If you want to jump into the Arc Raiders server slam-bam-a-lam, you can do so on PC via Steam or the Epic Games Store. You can also get in on the action on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S, if that's what you're into.