Is Arc Raiders too casual? Tarkov's boss thinks so

By WillyB · tactical PvE + open-world since 2012 · 21 June 2026

Can an extraction shooter be too friendly? Battlestate Games boss Nikita Buyanov clearly thinks so. In comments reported by PC Gamer and GamesRadar, he called Arc Raiders “an extraction shooter for casual people” and said that approach “is not an option for us,” because he wants “the most painful, most challenging, and most rewarding experience.” It is a spiky thing to say about the most popular game in your own genre. It is also, annoyingly, half right.

What was actually said

The quote comes from Buyanov talking about a future project, reported as Fragmentary Order, which he frames as the deliberate opposite of Arc Raiders. The short version of his argument: Arc Raiders smoothed off the edges that make extraction shooters bite, and he has no interest in doing the same. Tarkov stays painful on purpose.

That is his position, reported accurately, and you can disagree with the tone while still seeing the point underneath it. Tarkov’s whole reputation is built on the fact that it does not care about your evening. You can spend twenty minutes kitting out a loadout, take one round through a wall you never saw, and lose all of it before you have fired a shot. Buyanov is not confused about what he has made. He is defending it, loudly, at the exact moment the genre around him started softening.

Why he is half right

Arc Raiders did soften the genre, and that is exactly why it broke out. Tarkov is brilliant and brutal in equal measure, and the brutality is a wall a lot of people bounce off. Arc Raiders kept the tension and lowered the punishment, and it pulled in a crowd that the genre had been losing at the door for years. Calling that “casual” is a backhanded way of admitting it worked.

So both things are true at once. Arc Raiders is more forgiving, and being more forgiving is why it is the game everyone points new players at. That is not a flaw. That is a design choice that found its audience.

Where I part ways with him is the word “casual” doing the sneering. Lowering the punishment is not the same as lowering the skill ceiling. Arc Raiders still asks you to read a fight, manage your nerve on the way to extract, and decide when a bag is worth dying for. It just does not confiscate your whole night when you get it wrong. That is a different pain threshold, not the absence of one, and treating “less punishing” as “less serious” is the classic mistake the hardcore end keeps making.

Where the genre actually is in 2026

Step back and the split is the whole story. On one side you have the punishing end, Tarkov and whatever Buyanov builds next, aimed at people who want the pain. On the other you have the accessible end, Arc Raiders and the wave following it, including Marathon and the extraction projects publishers like Gaijin have lined up for 2026. The genre is not picking a winner. It is splitting into two audiences that want very different nights out.

That split is healthier than one side would have you believe. For years the complaint about extraction was that there was only one flavour, and if you did not have the stomach for a full wipe you were not welcome. Now there are two clear lanes, and a game can commit hard to either without pretending to be both. Fragmentary Order sounding like a deliberate reaction to Arc Raiders is the split working exactly as it should. If the jargon trips you up, the glossary is there for it.

What this means if you play solo

Here is the bit that matters for how I play. Most of the extraction stuff on the channel is solo, and the two ends of this split feel completely different on your own. The punishing games are a test of nerve where one mistake costs you the whole run. The accessible ones let you actually breathe and learn. Neither is better. They are different moods, and knowing which one you are in the mood for saves you a lot of wasted evenings.

Solo changes the maths, too. In a squad you can afford to gamble, because someone can carry your kit back if you fall. Alone, the punishing games turn every fight into a calculation about whether the loot is worth the loadout you are risking, and the accessible ones let you actually explore that calculation instead of being punished for making it once. That is why I keep landing on the same advice: match the game to the mood, not to whichever one somebody on the internet has decided is the “real” version.

If you are not sure which end suits you, that is literally what the extraction shooter matcher is for. And if you want the solo, tactical, take-it-seriously end of all this, the tactical and extraction shooters shelf is where the channel lives.

Buyanov can keep his most painful experience possible. I will keep enjoying both ends and judging each game on whether the run was worth it, not on how much it hurt.

extraction shooterArc RaidersEscape from TarkovMarathonsolo PvEtactical shooter

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