Dear fans, Diablo 4 Season 12 has just launched, bringing a wealth of new content. Besides transforming into The Butcher and experiencing the thrill of wielding this ferocious boss's power to annihilate all enemies, there's also the brand-new unique Bloodied items and Killstreak system to help you create unprecedented build power!

Of course, the developers didn't stop there. The day after the release of Diablo 4 Season of Slaughter, on March 11th, they also launched a new collaboration event with Doom: The Dark Ages. As a dark fantasy shooter, DOOM's intense combat and exaggerated visuals perfectly match the theme of The Butcher's carnage in Diablo 4 Season 12. Therefore, the event has generated considerable buzz since its launch.

However, after experiencing the event, many players didn't give the initial reviews of this Diablo 4 x DOOM collaboration a positive one. The player community described it as another pointless money-grabbing event. So, what's the real story? Let's take a look at the full details of this collaboration and share our thoughts. Then you can decide whether to participate.

This collaboration event launched on March 11, 2026, coinciding with the release of Season 12, and will continue until April 26, 2026.

The highlight of this update is DOOM: The Dark Ages Event Reliquary. Like regular Reliquaries, players need to use a specific token instead of $1 to unlock rewards. The key token is Dark Ages currency, which can only be obtained by defeating Elie and Champion enemies during the event.

There are 10 items waiting to be unlocked in DOOM: The Dark Ages Reliquary. However, these items are usually just cosmetic and don't offer any real benefits to your character. If you're aiming for increased character strength, you can ignore them; if you're an avid collector, don't hesitate to add these cosmetics to your inventory!

Players can use these rewards to transform ordinary shields into Doom's Shield Saw and their melee weapons into Slayer Flails. These new weapon styles might bring some different fun to your monotonous killing spree.

In addition, during the event, players can collect Doom Chests dropped by defeating Lair Bosses, which have a chance to drop unique weapons that resemble Doom's Crucible Blade. Finally, once you unlock all 10 rewards, you can also access the exclusive Forsaken Gates Town portal.

If you log in to the game during the event, you'll also have a chance to obtain free unique emblems, with the following times:

If you find out too late, the event may have already ended, but don't despair, as they will most likely reappear in a later Reliquary event. So stay tuned!

Besides the event gameplay, the collaboration bundles in Premium Shop have become a point of contention because of their high price and low cost-effectiveness.

The core item in this bundle is the Doom Slayer Armor Pack, which includes cosmetics for all 7 classes and costs 5,700 Platinum ($49.99). Meanwhile, each Praetor skin for each class is individually priced at 2,500 Platinum (~$24.99) and cannot be used across classes, making it more expensive to collect all the skins.

There's also The King of the Forge-Wing Bundle, valued at 2,800 Platinum ($24.99). This bundle includes Mecha Dragon Serrat mount skin, which is only available for cat mounts.

Additionally, you can also purchase the unique Cyclopean Cackle Bundle and Souls of the Lost Bundle for 2,500 Platinum (~$24.99).

Attention! If you're interested, please note the timing: The premium shop content will be available on March 12 at 12:00 PM PT / March 13 at 12:00 PM AKT.

Besides these, there's a small surprise to look forward to: Cacodemon and Lost Soul Pets.

You can pet and interact with them. The Cacodemon and Lost Soul Pets are priced at 2500 Platinum each. Each pet comes with a Mount Trophy and an Emblem, offering a fantastic opportunity to enrich your collection.

While the collaboration items visually recreate Doom style, the overall pricing strategy has sparked considerable discussion among players.

The complete collaboration outfit costs $125, a price not only significantly higher than the upcoming Diablo 4's Lord of Hatred expansion at $39.99, but also exceeding the base game's price of $49.99. For a collaboration that only offers cosmetic content, this pricing is clearly excessive, disappointing many players.

Overall, this Diablo 4 and DOOM collaboration leans more towards cosmetic and commercial aspects, with relatively limited innovation and integration in gameplay. The high prices have deterred many players. However, setting aside the collaboration itself, Diablo 4 season 12's gameplay mechanics are excellent, and player interest remains high.

Please note that this event ends on April 26th, so join now to win your exclusive rewards. It's also worth mentioning that the new Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred DLC officially launches on April 28th, so you won't have much free time!

ARC Raiders continues to bring players new gameplay experiences and insights with each update. This game, primarily focused on shooting and extraction, has launched a new seasonal event, mainly adjusting resource balance and also buffing enemies.

Each ARC Raiders update brings new challenges and opportunities, but player feedback on these updates can easily spark significant conflicts. Below is a breakdown of ARC Raiders update content, player requests, and subsequent developer updates.

The new event update largely follows this year's update roadmap, meeting player expectations. Shrouded Sky is the name of this update, and players can easily guess from the name that it will present significant environmental challenges.

Following the usual practice of seasonal events, Shrouded Sky creates environmental conditions unlike any before. The changes to the raid gameplay have many players eager to try their hand at the new map.

Hurricane map conditions introduce dust and debris into the air, affecting players' offense and defense. For example, strong winds often leave players overwhelmed in crisis situations.

On the other hand, sudden environmental chaos can also present an excellent opportunity to ambush enemies, maximizing damage while minimizing impact for a surprising and unexpected effect.

Open terrain allows hurricanes to rage more freely, increasing the difficulty of survival. Extreme weather and interference from ARC machines also place higher demands on players.

The update to ARC machines introduces two new ARC enemy variants. Breaking with established patterns, these new enemy variants alter combat strategies, such as in multi-location battles. To achieve victory, players are forced to change their strategies and step outside their comfort zones.

Besides these significant changes that force players to rethink their winning tactics. Other changes worth noting for players include changes to character appearance. Players can now equip various facial hair options.

Common hairs include stubble and beards, which undoubtedly add a fun element to otherwise monotonous battles and are a small way to showcase one's unique style. This also adds richness and diversity to Raiders' looting in Rust Belt.

In ARC Raiders updates, players can clearly feel the developers' increasing emphasis on Expedition system, its importance self-evident. Initially, Expedition system was an experimental mechanism for recording progress.

Now, Expedition system is evolving into a more mature reputation system. Completing projects and objectives becomes the player's task; successfully completing a series unlocks personal milestones.

After completing an Expedition, the player's game progress is complete. They can choose to rewind and reset certain points, while also receiving permanent bonuses to better prepare for the next Expedition.

The rewards for completing Expeditions are quite substantial. Players can earn $1, receive character bonuses, increase warehouse capacity, and improve resource utilization. Throughout the year's update roadmap, players will find that Expedition system will be released in multiple cycles.

This also reflects that Expedition system may become a flagship feature of ARC Raiders, serving as one of its iconic elements. The highly distinctive Expedition system continuously satisfies players' curiosity.

Besides the official new initiatives that have generated considerable discussion among players, some new hot topics have emerged in the games community, such as Mushroom Wars, which initially raises questions.

Regarding Mushroom Wars, mushrooms specifically refers to the organic resources needed for player exploration, which are generally very rare. However, as exploration progresses, players learn that resource spawn points are limited.

Waiting patiently at spawn points to obtain more resources has become a consensus among most players. Therefore, frequent battles erupt near spawn points, even those often located in remote and less-visited areas of the map.

This frequent warfare transforms resource acquisition into a predatory activity, significantly increasing the danger of the areas and making players vulnerable to death. This player-driven change in game mechanics is part of ARC Raiders' unique appeal.

Learning from the previous update, many players discovered a bug in the blueprint system. By employing specific techniques to farm chests at specific locations on the blueprints, players could obtain substantial amounts of weapons and loot.

This latest map update, however, patched the drop rate of resources, especially ARC Raiders blueprints. An excessively high blueprint drop rate is detrimental to gameplay.

Since this has negatively impacted player experience, to mitigate player frustration, developer Embark continues by increasing the probability of obtaining high-level crafting materials, thus reducing the negative impact of decreasing blueprint availability.

Every new game update inevitably draws criticism from a large player base, with a core focus on whether it protects their interests. Some players believe it's extremely beneficial for the long-term development of ARC Raiders. Others object, arguing that the acquisition speed of gear doesn't significantly improve.

Also Read: $1

The latest update reveals that the next update will be Flashpoint. Flashpoint is expected to launch around the next phase of Escalation content cycle. While the developers haven't provided detailed information, players can generally infer from past updates that the map environment will probably change.

The biggest anticipated update for ARC Raiders is Rift Tide, expected to make a strong late-game appearance. The new environment will move away from Rust Belt, making exploring coastal biomes a new focus. The addition of a large ARC boss enemy will present players with even greater challenges.

The above summarizes the player's reactions to this update. Gathered here because of our love for ARC Raiders, please look forward to the next update!

Bungie's Marathon officially launched on March 5, 2026, and its striking similarity to Embark's ARC Raiders, released on October 30, 2025, has sparked considerable discussion among players. Can Marathon steal more players from ARC Raiders?

Initial data shows that Marathon's peak concurrent player count on Steam was slightly over 86,000. This is far less than its competitor, ARC Raiders, which boasted a remarkable 264,000 concurrent players on Steam upon its launch last October.

Both are PvPvE resource-grabbing games, inherently sharing many similarities. Both possess similar mechanics, such as shields, bandages, weapon attachments, traders, quests, stamina, and unique PvE enemies. Even both games feature energy guns.

So, given their high degree of similarity, what are the differences between these two games?

The first and most obvious difference is the game's perspective. ARC Raiders offers a more forgiving third-person perspective, initially focused on PvE gameplay and still retaining strong PvE elements. Marathon, on the other hand, breaks the genre's boundaries, adopting a high-risk, high-reward first-person perspective, emphasizing player-versus-player combat. Marathon is known for its hardcore, PvP-centric gameplay.

Therefore, ARC Raiders allows you to experience pure PvE fun or fully enjoy the thrill of PvP. Marathon focuses more on PvP. These two games offer two different perspectives, allowing players to choose freely.

Frankly, you can play ARC Raiders casually without any problems. But Marathon is not so easy. I would even say that Marathon is not suitable for casual players.

Marathon's HUD and user interface are a chaotic mess, like an obnoxious first-year art student's exhibition, filled with colors and symbols. While you eventually learn them, their design is far from intuitive. It looks like a random jumble of small cubes with some nonsensical designs; unless you read the descriptions, you have no idea what they are. Meanwhile, the map, PvE enemies, and sound effects are all a jumbled mess.

ARC Raiders currently offers a more polished and comprehensive experience. ARC Raiders's combat experience is far superior to Marathon's. You can attack monster parts, and they react. While fighting them is still frightening, they don't feel invincible. The monsters in Marathon are more like tanks, with only their heads as weak points.

ARC Raiders' sound design is simply amazing. You can accurately pinpoint the location of nearby machines through sound effects, and if you hear multiple machines, you can identify them solely by sound. Moreover, the gunshots are very pleasant to hear, and the environmental sound effects are perfectly in line with expectations.

ARC Raiders' map events and design are also superior. Flare flares truly offer players more options. Events like night raids, cold waves, and hurricanes genuinely change how players interact with the map, keeping the game constantly fresh.

Everything in ARC feels more meticulously designed: item pickup is clearer, the user interface is simpler and more ergonomic, missions and contracts provide a real sense of progress, you know exactly what to do, you have your own base, you can invest time at your own pace and desire, creating a more engaging intrinsic goal, and you can customize your character, both in appearance and skill tree.

For a game to maintain its longevity, it undoubtedly needs continuous updates and upgrades, bringing more challenging elements.

Many people love ARC Raiders because each extraction feels like completing a huge challenge, but since the first Expedition, players have rarely experienced that exhilarating moment of successfully extracting. Unless you play particularly recklessly, extractions are almost inevitable. However, Marathon does this much better; every successful extraction is a huge and exhilarating challenge.

Marathon is better suited to an extraction shooter because every moment is filled with brutal challenges. ARC Raiders, on the other hand, feels more like a PvE loot-hunting game. To obtain the high-level ARC Raiders Weapon, you must defeat Queen and Matriarch bosses, something many players haven't achieved even after two resets. Marathon makes high-level content more accessible through a clear faction progression system, rather than restricting it to specific enemies like ARC Raiders.

After the second Expedition, ARC Raiders' weaknesses became increasingly apparent. While I enjoy the game's social interactions, once you reach level 75, the items become as monotonous as a shopping list, leaving only those highlights. ARC Raiders should take a good look at Marathon. If there's any room for improvement in ARC, it's increasing the difficulty.

In addition, there's equipment. $1 are lackluster; aside from the golden weapon, the crafting costs for other equipment are pitifully low. I hope the consequences of PvP will be more severe, so players will be more motivated to seriously prepare their gear.

Everyone is comparing these two games because they are essentially both survival shooters. One will succeed, the other will fail - that's the reality. Most survival shooter players won't play both games simultaneously because they don't have that much time and energy.

Therefore, in the long run, Bungie and Embark need to compete for player bases. This is beneficial for players; both games need to continuously upgrade and improve to attract more players.

Since its release, ARC Raiders has been loved by players for its thrilling gameplay mechanics and diverse enemies. But what's even more surprising is its friendly atmosphere in Solo Mode, which is unlike any other competitive shooter.

This atmosphere sets ARC Raiders apart from other shooters. Countless new players have tried the game because of its peculiar yet friendly player environment.

Based on this, some players have created a new gameplay: acting as a Rescue Raider to revive downed players. If you're curious about this gameplay, read on.

ARC Raiders is a shooting game, but its friendly atmosphere in Solo Mode has sparked widespread discussion since its release.

In most shooting games, the basic game mechanic is that players fight against enemies, winning to gain loot and losing to lose their lives. 

While ARC Raiders introduced a unique PvPvE mechanic, putting players in the threat of other hostile players and ARC bots, the core gameplay remains largely the same.

Over time, players were likely to tire of this type of gameplay, leading to a loss of appeal.

However, the friendly interaction between players in Solo Mode transformed the game. The in-game chat function and simple emotes allowed players to quickly understand each other upon meeting, even enabling previously unfamiliar players to team up against the powerful ARC.

In this context, some players moved beyond simple combat and looting of ARC Raiders items. They focused on rescuing wounded and downed players, turning the game into a high-risk rescue mission.

Perhaps this initially stemmed from a few players seeking a more challenging experience, but it quickly gained popularity among others.

This fresh interpretation of the core game mechanics, perfectly blending the thrill of gunfights with the act of helping others, provided players with a novel and rewarding experience.

If you want to become an excellent Rescue Raider, having the desire to do so isn't enough. Rescuing others requires careful action, quick reflexes in the face of battlefield situations, and constant vigilance.

Here are some strategies to maximize your rescue success rate with ARC Raiders while ensuring your own safety.

Stay in the center of the map as much as possible, avoiding remote locations, which can reduce the time required to reach the Remote Raider Flare launch point.

Additionally, you can choose smaller maps, such as Buried City and Stella Montis. On these maps, you can reach your destination faster and rescue other players.

ARC Raiders features a skill tree system with three distinct specializations: Conditioning, Survival, and Mobility. Players can unlock these skills to gain different bonuses.

To become an excellent Rescue Raider, you can enhance your Mobility branch, helping your character gain better climbing, jumping, and stamina, resulting in faster movement.

To avoid being misunderstood by other players, it's best to quickly state your purpose when approaching a downed player. Many players don't believe they'll be rescued in ARC Raiders. Clearly identifying yourself can help them persevere and build trust.

It's important to note that discovering a Remote Raider Flare doesn't mean the location is completely safe. Many downed players have been attacked by other raiders, who may still be in the area.

Before reaching your destination, listen carefully to your surroundings, assess potential dangers, and check if an attacker is still nearby.

Furthermore, always remain vigilant during revival and avoid reckless actions. Rescue others only when their own safety is guaranteed. If unexpected situations arise, you might engage in intense combat with other players, but the most important thing is to evacuate safely.

As a Rescue Raider, the most important item is Defibrillator. It's a Rare-level ARC Raiders item that can quickly revive downed players and restore some health.

There are several ways to obtain it: you can loot it while exploring the map or craft it in the workshop. If you don't have blueprints and haven't obtained them through looting, you can get them from Lance.

However, this isn't a cost-effective option. Rescuing players in ARC Raiders this way will consume an unimaginable amount of coins.

Furthermore, to ensure your safety during dangerous rescue operations, you'll need to equip some powerful weapons, but you should also consider the burden these $1 place on your character.

For Rescue Raiders, the most important thing is healing others and preserving yourself, not winning a spectacular battle. Therefore, you need to consider your own situation and make trade-offs between mobility and firepower, prioritizing agility.

Weapons like Burletta and Vulcano might be worth trying.

The thrill of Rescue Raider gameplay lies in players rescuing others in unknown situations, which undoubtedly increases the danger of adventuring on the map. This reflects both the friendly atmosphere and flexible game mechanics of ARC Raiders, while also providing players with a completely new experience different from looting and combat.

Whether you're a thrill-seeking pacifist player or looking to try something new, becoming a Rescue Raider and saving others is a gameplay style worth exploring.