Arc Raiders' Surprise Cameo on South Park Shows Just How Close to the Wire Trey Parker and Matt Stone Make Each Episode

If you’ve watched the latest occurrence of South Park, you mightiness person noticed a astonishment quality from 1 of the hottest video games connected earth: Arc Raiders.

Embark Studios’ extraction shooter is 1 of the most-played video games connected PC and console close now, with an awesome 4 cardinal copies sold truthful far. At 1 point, it deed implicit 700,000 concurrent players crossed each platforms — an awesome accomplishment so for a caller IP astatine a clip erstwhile truthful galore garbage to beryllium prized distant from established live-service behemoths.

Clearly, among Arc Raiders’ galore fans is idiosyncratic down the making of South Park. In the latest Season 28 occurrence broadcast this week, called "Turkey Trot,” Cartman finds Tolkien Black playing Arc Raiders connected Xbox. The crippled appears successful aggregate scenes, 1 of which shows gameplay footage connected a TV.

Arc Raiders makes a astonishment quality successful the latest occurrence of South Par. Image credit: Comedy Central.

As spotted by Eurogamer, Ashley St. Germain, selling main astatine Embark, took to LinkedIn to explicate however the improbable collab happened.

“There’s a batch to beryllium thankful for this year, but I don’t cognize however I’m going to apical this week. On Monday South Park inquired if a quality could play ARC Raiders successful an upcoming episode, connected Tuesday we provided footage, and connected Wednesday we were successful S28’s “Turkey Trot” episode. Like Tolkien, I conjecture a batch of america conscionable can’t enactment down ARC Raiders. Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃🍁

That’s… truly adjacent to the wire! But it should travel arsenic nary astonishment to South Park fans who cognize a small astir however its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, enactment the amusement together.

Traditionally, Parker and Stone make each occurrence week-by-week, which makes for a chaotic accumulation but topical shows. But they switched to a biweekly docket for Season 27, with the elongated accumulation clip allowing the brace much country to enactment connected each episode. Season 27 had enjoyed large ratings and sparked overmuch debate, but it besides suffered an erratic merchandise schedule. The archetypal 2 episodes arrived connected the modular play schedule, but past the bid switched to a biweekly docket earlier the delayed 5th episode, which ended up going down arsenic the bid finale, aired 3 weeks aboriginal connected September 25.

Comedy Central had delayed the Season 27 ender conscionable hours earlier it was owed to air, with Parker and Stone insisting the blasted laic astatine their door. “Apparently erstwhile you bash everything astatine the past infinitesimal sometimes you don’t get it done,” the brace told Variety. “This one’s connected us. We didn’t get it done successful time. Thanks to Comedy Central and South Park fans for being truthful understanding. Tune successful adjacent week!” As acold arsenic we astatine IGN are aware, Parker and Stone person missed the scheduled merchandise of South Park conscionable erstwhile before, owed to a powerfulness outage, but ne'er for not getting an occurrence done successful time.

It’s worthy noting that during their San Diego Comic-Con 2025 panel, which took spot the time aft the Season 27 opener aired, Parker said the brace were unsure what the adjacent occurrence would be, revealing the determination was “super stressful.”

Of course, South Park has a past of featuring video games, possibly astir famously World of Warcraft. Indeed, Blizzard's MMORPG was the absorption of the episode, Make Love, Not Warcraft, astatine a clip erstwhile it was 1 of the hottest video games connected earth. Other games featured connected the amusement see Valve's Counter-Strike, Rock Band, and Call of Duty.

Only 1 occurrence of South Park Season 28 remains, to beryllium broadcast connected December 10.

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Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].