Aggression > Skill Based Matchmaking, According to Embark Studios

But the real issue in most communities isn't "bad people", but rather it’s about mismatched intent between players. When you put someone who wants to play a game for the social experience in the same room as someone who wants to optimize every second for efficiency, both of them leave unhappy.

Neither is wrong, but they are fundamentally incompatible. This is why I'm excited about Patrick Söderlund’s confirmation of Aggression-Based Matchmaking in Embark Studios' Arc Raiders. It’s the first major acknowledgment that the "vibe" of a community is a data point we can actually match for.

If you can identify how a player intends to show up (whether they are there to collaborate or to extract), you don't have to police them. You just let them find the neighborhood they’ve earned through their own actions.

This is the blueprint for how we build digital communities in 2026. It means the players who want to build a shared story aren't being forced to play the same way as those who just want to hunt. It creates a space where different playstyles can actually coexist because the system understands the difference between them.

AtELO, this is the plumbing that excites us. 2026 is the year we stop trying to fix communities from the top down and start building systems and tools that recognize human intent from the bottom up.

It’s about connecting the right people based on how they want to play, rather than how we want them to play.