Embark Studios figured out how to make an Unreal Engine 5 game run smoothly on PC, and Digital Foundry just revealed their secret. It’s brilliant and slightly hilarious. They just turned off all the features that make UE5 games run like garbage. No Lumen global illumination. No Nanite geometry. No virtual shadow maps. The result is Arc Raiders, an extraction shooter that launched October 30, 2025 and actually maintains clean frame times without constant stuttering.
The UE5 Trifecta Gets Axed
Digital Foundry’s November 6 deep dive confirms what PC gamers suspected after playing Arc Raiders. The game feels remarkably smooth compared to other Unreal Engine 5 releases from 2025. Shader compilation stutter, the plague that ruins first-time experiences in so many UE5 games, simply doesn’t exist. Frame time charts show consistent performance across different CPU configurations. The game scales beautifully across multiple CPU threads rather than choking on single-core bottlenecks.
How did Embark pull this off? By looking at UE5’s signature features, the ones Epic Games loves showing off in tech demos, and saying no thanks. Lumen, the real-time global illumination system that’s supposed to revolutionize lighting, got replaced with probe-based RTXGI. Nanite, the virtualized geometry that allows millions of polygons, didn’t make the cut. Virtual shadow maps that provide detailed dynamic shadows? Also gone. What’s left is an engine stripped down to run fast instead of looking cutting edge.
The Performance Payoff
The numbers tell the story. When Digital Foundry compared Arc Raiders to The Outer Worlds 2, another recent UE5 release, Arc Raiders nearly tripled the frame rate in GPU-limited scenarios. That’s not a typo. Three times the performance. Now, this isn’t a perfectly fair comparison since the games have different art styles and technical goals, but it demonstrates the massive performance overhead that Lumen, Nanite, and virtual shadow maps impose.
Testing across different hardware configurations showed Arc Raiders maintaining smooth performance where other UE5 games fall apart. An aging GTX 1660 Ti managed 85 to 90 fps at 1080p on medium settings with FSR 3 upscaling and frame generation enabled. Even a laptop with an RTX 3050 Ti mobile chip hit 78 to 80 fps with careful settings adjustments. These are cards that struggle with most modern AAA releases, yet Arc Raiders keeps them relevant for competitive online play.
The Visual Trade-Offs
Of course, nothing comes free. Arc Raiders looks good, but it doesn’t look as technically impressive as games that fully embrace UE5’s feature set. Shadow quality is a major weak point. Many objects don’t cast shadows at all, and when they do, the resolution is noticeably low. Cascading shadow issues plague the open world environments, with detail scaling problems visible as you move through areas. It’s the kind of thing you might not notice during intense firefights but becomes obvious when you stop to look around.
The lighting system based on probe-based RTXGI avoids the smearing artifacts that plague some Lumen implementations, which is good. But it comes with its own problems including bounce lighting errors, screen space ambient occlusion mishaps, and light leaks where illumination appears in places it shouldn’t. The game features lots of metallic surfaces and water, but reflections rely on outdated screen space reflections backed by basic cube maps. It looks a generation behind what Lumen-based games can achieve when they’re running properly.
Still Looks Decent Overall
Despite these technical downgrades, Arc Raiders manages to look genuinely appealing. The art direction emphasizes a vibrant post-apocalyptic Italy where remnants of history blend with brutal space travel infrastructure. The world feels alive and atmospheric even without cutting-edge lighting tech. Embark designed the entire game around these technical limitations from the start, so the assets, environments, and overall presentation work together cohesively. It doesn’t feel like features were cut late in development. It feels like a game built intentionally to run well.
For an online extraction shooter where performance matters more than screenshot quality, prioritizing smooth frame rates over visual fidelity makes sense. Players need to react quickly to threats from AI robots and other human players. Dropping frames or experiencing stutters at the wrong moment means losing your collected loot and wasting a run. Consistent 60 fps or higher beats prettier shadows every single time in this genre.
Traversal Stutter Remains
Arc Raiders isn’t a perfect technical showcase despite solving shader compilation issues. Unreal Engine 5’s other major problem, traversal stutter, still manifests in different ways depending on your system state. When CPU limited, you can experience noticeable hitches as you move through environments. Using a frame rate cap eliminates the stop-start stuttering effect, but replaces it with animation stutter where camera and character movement loses fluidity even though frame times stay consistent.
This traversal stutter is inherent to how UE5 handles streaming in world data on the fly. Epic has been working on improvements with each engine update, but the fundamental issue remains across most UE5 titles. Embark managed to minimize it better than many studios, but couldn’t eliminate it entirely. For a game about exploring open areas and extracting loot before other players kill you, occasional movement hitches are annoying but rarely game-breaking.
What This Means for UE5
Arc Raiders proves an uncomfortable truth about Unreal Engine 5 in 2025. The signature features Epic built the engine around, the ones they showcase in every tech demo and presentation, are still too demanding for most gaming PCs to handle well. Developers face a choice. Use Lumen, Nanite, and virtual shadow maps for cutting-edge visuals at the cost of performance, or strip them out and build games that actually run smoothly.
Digital Foundry specifically called out their wish that Arc Raiders included optional high-quality UE5 settings for future-proofing. Hide them under an insane difficulty toggle with performance warnings, but give players with powerful hardware the option to enable Lumen and Nanite. This would let the game scale both down for performance and up for visual quality depending on what players prioritize. As it stands, even players with RTX 4090 graphics cards are playing with lighting and shadow systems that could look significantly better.
The Embark Track Record
This isn’t Embark Studios’ first rodeo with Unreal Engine optimization. The Finals, their previous multiplayer shooter released in 2023, featured impressive destructible environments and smooth performance despite also running on UE5. The team clearly has expertise in identifying performance bottlenecks and making smart technical trade-offs to deliver responsive online experiences. Arc Raiders continues that philosophy, prioritizing netcode stability and consistent frame rates over pushing visual boundaries.
The decision to charge 40 dollars for Arc Raiders after initially planning a free-to-play model suggests Embark is confident in the game’s technical foundation. Players paying upfront expect a polished experience, and the performance delivers on that promise. Whether the gameplay loop keeps players engaged long-term remains to be seen, but at least they won’t be fighting the engine to have fun.
Community Reactions
PC gaming communities have responded to the Digital Foundry analysis with a mix of relief and frustration. Relief that at least one studio figured out how to ship a functional UE5 game. Frustration that the solution involves abandoning the features that supposedly justify using UE5 in the first place. Some players question why developers even bother with Unreal Engine 5 if they’re going to disable Lumen and Nanite. Why not use UE4 or a different engine entirely?
The answer likely involves Epic’s aggressive licensing terms, marketplace ecosystem, and developer familiarity. Even without Lumen and Nanite, UE5 offers improvements to workflow, tools, and base rendering compared to UE4. Switching engines mid-project or choosing an entirely different engine comes with massive costs and risks. For Embark, using a stripped-down UE5 probably made more business sense than any alternative, even if it means missing out on the engine’s headline features.
FAQs
What is Arc Raiders?
Arc Raiders is a third-person extraction shooter developed by Embark Studios, the creators of The Finals. Released October 30, 2025, the game is set in post-apocalyptic Italy where players scavenge resources while avoiding deadly robots and other human players.
Why does Arc Raiders run so much better than other UE5 games?
According to Digital Foundry’s analysis, Embark Studios disabled Unreal Engine 5’s most demanding features including Lumen global illumination, Nanite virtualized geometry, and virtual shadow maps. This dramatically reduces performance overhead at the cost of visual fidelity.
What lighting system does Arc Raiders use instead of Lumen?
The game uses probe-based RTXGI, NVIDIA’s real-time lighting technology. While not as advanced as Lumen, it runs on all GPUs including AMD and Intel cards, and performs much better while avoiding some of Lumen’s visual artifacts.
Does Arc Raiders have shader compilation stutter?
No, Digital Foundry confirmed that shader compilation stutter simply doesn’t exist in Arc Raiders. This is one of the game’s biggest technical achievements, as shader stutter plagues most Unreal Engine 5 releases on PC.
What are the visual downsides of Arc Raiders’ approach?
Shadow quality is significantly worse than UE5 games using virtual shadow maps, with many objects not casting shadows at all. Reflections rely on outdated screen space techniques. Lighting suffers from bounce errors and light leaks that Lumen would handle better.
Who is Digital Foundry?
Digital Foundry is a specialized tech analysis outlet that performs in-depth performance testing and visual analysis of video games across consoles and PC. Their technical expertise makes them one of the most trusted sources for understanding how games actually run.
Does Arc Raiders support DLSS and FSR?
Yes, Arc Raiders supports NVIDIA DLSS 4 with multi-frame generation for RTX cards, and AMD FSR 3 with frame generation for all GPUs. These upscaling technologies help maintain high frame rates even on older hardware.
Is Arc Raiders free to play?
No, Embark Studios changed the business model from free-to-play to a paid 40 dollar release. The game is available on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S with full cross-play support.
Conclusion
Arc Raiders represents both a success story and a damning indictment of Unreal Engine 5’s current state. Embark Studios proved you can ship a UE5 game that runs smoothly on a wide range of PC hardware without constant stuttering and performance problems. The cost? Abandoning the very features that define the engine and make it cutting edge. It’s like buying a sports car and removing the turbocharger to improve fuel economy. Sure, it works better for daily driving, but you’ve lost what made it special. For competitive online games where performance is paramount, Embark made the right call. Arc Raiders players get consistent frame rates, responsive controls, and minimal technical frustrations. But the broader implication is troubling. If the best way to optimize Unreal Engine 5 is to not actually use Unreal Engine 5’s signature technology, what does that say about the engine’s readiness for widespread adoption? Epic Games needs to address these performance problems at a fundamental level, or we’ll keep seeing developers either ship broken games or strip out features to make them functional. Neither option is ideal. Until then, Arc Raiders stands as proof that sometimes the smartest technical decision is knowing what not to include.