I did not go into Arc Raiders planning to play like a rat. After a few bad runs, I had lost some of my good gear and just wanted to blow off some steam in the game’s unofficial PvP arena “Stella Montis”. In the best-case scenario, the goal was to go in guns blazing, borrowing some fine piece of equipment from fellow raiders, and booking it to the extract. The worst-case scenario, where I would lose everything, didn’t bother me since I was running a free loadout. Stella Montis has a reputation. It is built for tight and tense corridors that encourage player engagement. But another reason for its infamy is how it exposes one of the players’ biggest frustrations with this game, which is the free leadout problem. Free loadout players arrive with a basic gun, ammo, shield, and health, which is not much on paper, but enough to become dangerous when they have nothing meaningful to lose. And that’s exactly the logic my random teammate proposed we lean into.…