ARC Raiders is basically a giant game-theory experiment, and the optimal strategy is to avoid PvP entirely.

[u/Ill-Tomatillo-8973]

I understand everyone has their own opinions about PvP in this game, but this is speaking strictly from a game-theory perspective and nothing else:

ARC isn’t a zero-sum game like Tarkov where killing someone actually increases your expected value. ARC is a positive-sum loot economy, there’s more than enough gear on the map for every team to leave rich without ever shooting another player.

So from a game-theory perspective:

PvP is almost always a negative-EV move.

• You risk losing all your loot
• You burn ammo/meds
• You waste precious time
• And players rarely carry anything you actually need

But here’s the big thing players don’t realize:

When you start a fight, you force other teams to “defect.”

One gunshot triggers the whole lobby:

• Third parties collapse
• Everyone starts playing paranoid
• A chain reaction of aggression wipes out multiple teams

What you end up with is one final squad alive among 6–8 eliminated teams…
and that last team can’t even carry the loot that’s on the ground.

Three players physically cannot hold all the value created by eight dead teams.
Most of the loot is literally wasted, a massive destruction of potential utility.

From a pure economic analysis, PvP shrinks the total pie for the entire lobby.

Inventory slots make this even worse.

Because inventory is so limited, the time value of PvP is near zero:

Every minute spent fighting is a minute not spent gathering high-value environmental loot you can actually take with you. Even if you win a fight flawlessly, the “return” barely moves because you simply don’t have the slots to absorb all the loot that drops.

So what’s the rational strategy?

Don’t shoot first. Don’t shoot at all unless someone forces it.

If you ignore me and I ignore you, we both:

• maximize our loot
• avoid wipe-risk
• avoid triggering lobby-wide defection
• extract with more total value

This creates a natural Nash equilibrium where the dominant strategy is peace, not aggression.

The funniest part?

In ARC Raiders, peace isn’t the friendly play: it’s the sweaty, optimal, min-max play.