Arc Raiders was one of the biggest games of 2025 and it continues to be incredibly popular on Steam. But its use of AI-generated voice lines rubbed many the wrong way. Now, Patrick Söderlund, CEO of Embark Studios, says the team has replaced many text-to-speech lines with real dialogue recorded by humans that is “better” than the artificial intelligence shown at launch.
When the Embark Extraction Shooter Arc Raiders launched in October on consoles and PC, it has become one of the most played games of the moment and received rave reviews from critics and fans. Yet there was some tensions around the release of the game when it was revealed that many in-game voice lines heard when pinging a location were created using AI-based text-to-speech, built using audio provided by actors who received a licensing fee. For some, it was not acceptable and spoiled the launch of Arc Raiders. The CEO of Nexon, the game’s publisher, said all studios are using AI toolsand that’s how it is. But Söderlund and his team seem to be bucking the trend a bit.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Söderlund explained “a lot” of the in-game voice lines in Arc Raiders are recorded by human actors and there are now fewer AI-generated lines in the game than there were when it launched last year.
“We re-recorded some lines after the launch and performed them with real voices,” Söderlund told the outlet, clarifying that they did not want to “replace” real performers.
“There is a difference in quality. A real professional actor is better than AI; that’s how it is. We watch [AI] above all as a production tool. We can test things internally. We can test 15 different lines without saving them, and then we know what to save. It’s also a way for us to work, and not to replace the actors. We do not necessarily believe in the systematic replacement of humans by AI.
Söderlund also explained that the studio pays its actors for “all the time spent” in the booth recording lines and that it continues to “bring a lot of them back as we continue to update the game.” And in some “select” situations, Embark pays actors for “permission to license their text-to-speech voice” for audio lines that aren’t as “essential to the immersion of the experience.” This is mainly for location pings.
The takeaway here is that Söderlund seems to understand that AI-generated content is still not popular among gamers and is trying to reassure people that Arc Raiders has less than before. But it still contains and will likely continue to use text-to-speech voice lines, and for some players this will remain a deal breaker.
