Over half of Arc Raiders players on Steam have barely engaged with PvP, and 19% have never even killed another player

Yesterday, I was looting a cache in Arc Raiders when someone walked up and blasted me with a shotgun. I returned fire with my measly Kettle peashooter and somehow won the fight, which triggered a Steam achievement:

Unyielding: Knock out 10 raiders (42.3%)

I thought that couldn't possibly be right. Over 35 hours in Arc Raiders, and that was only my tenth time getting a lick in with PvP? But after thinking about it, yea, it lines up. I haven't shot anybody on sight since my first couple of raids, and my modest kill count is almost entirely self-defense—all except for one time I was playing with friends and they decided to be aggressors (not my finest moment). My experience playing solo has been so overwhelmingly chill that I've hardly had any problems with other raiders roaming the Rust Belt.

After examining the achievement closer, it turns out my situation isn't unusual. Just 42.3% of Steam players have the Unyielding achievement, meaning that over half (57.7%) of the PC player base is at least as pacifist as me.

That's simply remarkable for an extraction shooter. If there was any doubt left that Arc Raiders has developed a uniquely non-hostile culture, there ya go. Even more notable is the earn rate of another Steam achievement:

Crossed the Threshold: Knock out a raider (81.3%)

A whopping 19% of PC players haven't even downed another player at all. Arc Raiders has been out for nearly two weeks. Now that's surprising.

Achievement metrics come with some caveats, of course. Those numbers include anyone who has bought and launched Arc Raiders, so surely some of those 57.3% represent folks who haven't played much since they got it, but the earn rate of other early achievements tell us that nearly 90% of Steam players have at least completed the tutorial and dealt 1,000 damage to Arc.

And for a fun bit of social symmetry, the exact same percentage of players (81.3%) who've indulged in murder have actively engaged in neighborly elevator sharing:

The Friends We Made Along The Way: Return to Speranza together with an encountered Raider (81.3%).

That's nice.