Arc Raiders' Chernobyl Piano: How a Sample From the Forbidden Zone Ended Up in the Game

Somewhere inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone sits an old piano. It is described in the developers' account as an "old piano" found in the Forbidden Zone. At some point, someone travelled into the Forbidden Zone, recorded it, and built a sample library from the results. That library was later purchased by Embark Studios and folded into the music of ARC Raiders, an ARC Raiders Chernobyl piano sample story that is stranger for how quietly it was told.

The developers volunteered the detail themselves, in the sound and music instalment of their official behind-the-scenes documentary series, The Evolution of ARC Raiders, hosted by Danny O'Dwyer (per secondary listings of the episode). In that episode, the game's audio designers and composers discuss how the score was assembled, and the piano comes up as one ingredient among many. The remark surfaced publicly on 2 November 2026, when PC Gamer picked it up.

That is not a new announcement. No patch notes, no marketing beat, no trailer sting. Just a quiet aside in a sound design episode that happens to be one of the strangest provenance stories in recent game audio.

What the Devs Actually Said

The substance of the remark is that the team bought "a wonderful sample library" made by someone who went to the Zone and sampled an old piano there. They bought it, and they used it.

That sourcing chain matters. Embark did not travel to Chernobyl. No one from the studio hauled a field recorder into a radiation exclusion zone. A third party made the library, Embark purchased it, and the recordings ended up in the game's audio. Any retelling that implies otherwise is getting the story wrong.

On the episode itself: secondary listings identify the sound and music instalment as S2 EP5, "Sound & Music." PC Gamer's reporting cites the YouTube channel without an episode number, so treat the numbering as per those listings rather than as confirmed by the original report.

One honest limitation: no source names a specific track or moment where the sample appears. The developers said they used it. Describe it as part of the game's music and sound design generally, not as a confirmed element of a named cue.

Why a Chernobyl Piano Fits Arc Raiders

The "Forbidden Zone" in the quote is the real thing. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation is the officially designated exclusion area around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster in Ukraine, a 30-kilometre zone, with an adjacent radioecological reserve across the border in Belarus. It is a place defined by abandonment.

ARC Raiders is a post-apocalyptic extraction shooter set on a ruined surface. A genuine artifact from a genuine exclusion zone carries an unusually literal resonance in that context. The game does not need to say anything about it. The provenance does the work on its own.

What makes the detail notable is how casually it was presented. The developers framed it as part of a deliberately textured sound design, not as a headline feature. The piano is one texture in a wider palette, which is arguably the more interesting framing: someone at Embark heard a library made from a Chernobyl piano and thought, yes, that belongs here.

The score itself is credited to composers Patrik Andrén and Johan Söderqvist, the latter a Swedish film composer whose cinematic background explains the music's widescreen bent. An official soundtrack has since been released and pressed on 2xLP vinyl through retailers including Black Screen Records and the IGN Store, a treatment usually reserved for scores with a genuine following, though it remains supporting context rather than the story.

The Game, Briefly

For readers arriving from the news: ARC Raiders is Embark Studios' multiplayer extraction shooter, released 30 October 2025 on PS5, PC and Xbox Series X/S. It is built on Unreal Engine 5 and playable solo or in teams. Our coverage of Arc Raiders' Live-Service Success explains how the game has evolved since launch, while AI vs. Human Actors in Gaming examines a separate and equally unusual chapter in the game's production history.

A Real Artifact From a Real Apocalypse

The appeal of this detail is not hype. It is the idea of a sound library sourced from a place that is itself a real-world exclusion zone, quietly doing work in a game about scavenging a ruined surface. Most games borrow the aesthetic of disaster. This one borrowed a fragment of the real thing.

Which leaves the small, satisfying irony at the centre of it. A sound in a game about scavenging a ruined surface came from a real exclusion zone.