PUBG: Black Budget vs ARC Raiders

Release status

Black Budget: unreleased · ARC Raiders: released

Perspective

Black Budget: FPP-first · ARC Raiders: third-person

Combat

Both combine player conflict with hostile AI threats

Party size

Both support groups of up to three

World pressure

Black Budget uses the shrinking Anomaly; ARC Raiders centers its surface threat on ARC machines and other Raiders

What is the clearest difference?

The camera. Black Budget is designed as an FPP-first tactical shooter; ARC Raiders plays in third person. That is not a cosmetic preference — it changes what you can see from cover, how ambushes work, and whether peeking a corner costs you anything. Two otherwise similar extraction shooters play very differently once one of them lets you see around walls.

The second difference is availability. ARC Raiders is released and playable. Black Budget has run three closed tests and has no announced release date.

How do the worlds differ?

Black Budget puts up to 45 Contractors on Coli Island — a single 2.5 × 2.5 km island trapped in a time loop by the Anomaly, with a corporate, deniable framing built around recovering technology tied to the SAPIENS programme.

ARC Raiders splits between a surface ruled by lethal machines and an underground society called Speranza, with four distinct maps at launch and evolving conditions — varying weather, enemies and mechanics — so runs differ between visits. Its threat is a defined faction of machines, from drone swarms to mechanical giants, rather than an environmental phenomenon.

One island under a time loop against a surface-and-underground world with a machine antagonist: same genre skeleton, entirely different fiction and, more practically, a different amount of map variety on day one.

Which one is closer to PUBG?

Black Budget, unambiguously. It is made by PUBG Studios, carries PUBG's gunplay lineage, and imports the shrinking-zone mechanic directly — the Anomaly compresses the playable area exactly as the blue zone does. If tactical realism and PUBG-style ballistics are what you want, that is the closer relative.

ARC Raiders has its own movement, camera and science-fiction identity, and its combat is shaped around fighting machines rather than a milsim-adjacent frame.

How does progression compare?

Both keep progression outside the raid, and both put a personal workshop or base at the centre of it. ARC Raiders has players craft, repair and upgrade gear in their own workshop, sell scavenged loot for coin, unlock skills through experience, and complete quests for Traders with competing agendas.

Black Budget confirms an expandable Base with crafting stations, stash upgrades and income facilities, a research station, character skills and proficiencies, and three rival factions offering contracts and reputation-based rewards. The structural parallel is close — the difference is that ARC Raiders' systems are shipped and measurable while Black Budget's are described.

Which should you play?

Right now, ARC Raiders, because it exists. Beyond that the honest split is perspective and tone: pick ARC Raiders for third-person movement, machine combat and more launch-day map variety; wait for Black Budget if you want first-person PUBG gunplay and a tighter, time-boxed raid on a single dense island.

Important limitation

Black Budget is still in testing. Balance, progression, content and even confirmed features can change before release, so this comparison covers officially stated high-level design rather than declaring a winner. Anything about how the two games actually feel to play against each other is unknowable until Black Budget ships.