TimTheTatman Walked Away From a Six-Figure Arc Raiders Deal

TimTheTatman isn't shy about what he thinks of Arc Raiders. During a September 2 broadcast, he told viewers he turned down a six-figure sponsorship deal that would have had him playing the game for four hours — and he has no regrets about walking away from it.

What He Actually Said

According to IGN, Tim was pretty straightforward with his audience about the whole thing. He said the game frustrated him to a degree he rarely experiences, and that no amount of money in the six-figure range was going to change his mind about loading it back up.

"For me, the game frustrated me so much, I got frustrated so much with that game that I don't want to play it ever again," he told viewers. "Even to a point where six figures didn't get me back on it."

He did leave himself a small out, joking that a seven-figure offer might be enough to get him to reconsider. But short of that, he seems firm.

Why the Number Matters

To be clear about what Tim passed on: a six-figure deal means at minimum $100,000 — likely more — to sit in front of a camera and play a video game for roughly the length of a workday. That's the kind of money that makes most people rethink their strong opinions pretty quickly. The fact that he didn't is a decent signal of just how unpleasant his experience with Arc Raiders was.

Sponsored streams in this price range are fairly standard for top-tier streamers, but it's rare for someone to publicly confirm they turned one down — and rarer still to explain why with this level of candor. It's a different kind of moment compared to the usual streaming drama, like when xQc was hit with a Twitch ban over a five-second World Cup clip or Ludwig had to shut down 'made up' EVO Street Fighter drama. This is just a streamer being honest about a bad product experience.

Arc Raiders' Rough Road

Tim's frustration doesn't exist in a vacuum. Arc Raiders launched in late 2025 and actually had a strong start — the game hit a peak of 465,000 concurrent players on Steam in December of that year, about two months after release. That's a legitimate number, especially for a new IP entering a crowded market alongside established franchises like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7.

The problem came after launch. Players started calling out a shortage of meaningful content updates, and the player base started shrinking. Embark Studios eventually confirmed the game would only receive two major updates per year going forward, which didn't help sentiment. On top of that, the studio recently delayed upcoming expeditions until 2027, pushing content even further out.

When a game is in that kind of holding pattern, it becomes a harder sell — not just to players, but to content creators who are supposed to generate enthusiasm on camera.

What This Tells You About Sponsored Content

Sponsored streams work best when the creator can at least appear somewhat engaged with what they're playing. If Tim had taken the deal and spent four hours visibly miserable, that probably wouldn't have reflected well on Arc Raiders either. Sometimes walking away from a sponsorship is actually the more honest move for everyone involved — the streamer doesn't fake it, and the game doesn't get the kind of coverage that makes it look worse than doing nothing at all.

Whether Embark Studios approached Tim directly or went through an agency isn't clear, but the fact that they were willing to spend six figures on a single four-hour stream suggests they understood the game needed visibility. It just wasn't enough to overcome one creator's genuine dislike of the experience.

For Tim, the line is apparently somewhere between six and seven figures. That's a strange sentence to write, but here we are.

Related on Ni4o: Ludwig Shuts Down 'Made Up' EVO Street Fighter Drama