Surprisingly, it wasn’t Rockstar’s much delayed Grand Theft Auto VI that dominated Google’s charts in 2025, but a new extraction shooter hit. Embark’s Arc Raiders took the number one spot in the games category, edging out several high-profile releases and reminding everyone how quickly player interest can pivot in today’s market.
As is customary, Google published its list of the most searched keywords of 2025, and Embark’s Arc Raiders took first place in the games category. It beat titles such as Battlefield 6, Split Fiction, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Path of Exile 2, Grand Theft Auto VI, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Minecraft and Roblox. Another game in the top 10 is Strands, an online word-search game created by The New York Times, although it is not a traditional video game. Grand Theft Auto VI only made it to seventh place, which is no surprise given that the release date was pushed back from fall 2025 to May 26, then to November 19 of next year. This may have prompted fans to distract themselves from the game, given the long wait.
However, the biggest surprise is that Arc Raiders won this title, especially since it did not receive much attention until its final server-load test at the end of September. A year ago, it would have been difficult to predict such a huge success. Embark was previously only associated with The Finals, a free-to-play arena shooter that received a mixed reception. Arc Raiders was reworked from an exclusively cooperative concept into a PvPvE game. This final formula successfully won over fans of the booming extraction-shooter genre. It sold more than 4 million copies in about 12 days, making it Nexon’s most successful global game to date. According to the latest data from Alinea Analytics, Arc Raiders was the best-selling game on Steam in November. Its total sales have already exceeded 7.7 million copies across all platforms.
This surge in popularity proves that, despite the importance of marketing campaigns, word of mouth is still the most effective form of advertising, especially in the age of the internet and social media.
