If you’ve watched the latest episode of South Park, you might have noticed a surprise appearance from one of the hottest video games on earth: Arc Raiders.
Embark Studios’ extraction shooter is one of the most-played video games on PC and console right now, with an impressive 4 million copies sold so far. At one point, it hit over 700,000 concurrent players across all platforms — an impressive achievement indeed for a new IP at a time when so many refuse to be prized away from established live-service behemoths.
Clearly, among Arc Raiders’ many fans is someone behind the making of South Park. In the latest Season 28 episode broadcast this week, called "Turkey Trot,” Cartman finds Tolkien Black playing Arc Raiders on Xbox. The game appears in multiple scenes, one of which shows gameplay footage on a TV.
As spotted by Eurogamer, Ashley St. Germain, marketing chief at Embark, took to LinkedIn to explain how the unlikely collab happened.
“There’s a lot to be thankful for this year, but I don’t know how I’m going to top this week. On Monday South Park inquired if a character could play ARC Raiders in an upcoming episode, on Tuesday we provided footage, and on Wednesday we were in S28’s “Turkey Trot” episode. Like Tolkien, I guess a lot of us just can’t put down ARC Raiders. Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃🍁
That’s… really close to the wire! But it should come as no surprise to South Park fans who know a little about how its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, put the show together.
Traditionally, Parker and Stone create each episode week-by-week, which makes for a chaotic production but topical shows. But they switched to a biweekly schedule for Season 27, with the elongated production time allowing the pair more room to work on each episode. Season 27 had enjoyed big ratings and sparked much debate, but it also suffered an erratic release schedule. The first two episodes arrived on the standard weekly schedule, but then the series switched to a biweekly schedule before the delayed fifth episode, which ended up going down as the series finale, aired three weeks later on September 25.
Comedy Central had delayed the Season 27 ender just hours before it was due to air, with Parker and Stone insisting the blame lay at their door. “Apparently when you do everything at the last minute sometimes you don’t get it done,” the pair told Variety. “This one’s on us. We didn’t get it done in time. Thanks to Comedy Central and South Park fans for being so understanding. Tune in next week!” As far as we at IGN are aware, Parker and Stone have missed the scheduled release of South Park just once before, due to a power outage, but never for not getting an episode done in time.
It’s worth noting that during their San Diego Comic-Con 2025 panel, which took place the day after the Season 27 opener aired, Parker said the pair were unsure what the next episode would be, revealing the decision was “super stressful.”
Of course, South Park has a history of featuring video games, perhaps most famously World of Warcraft. Indeed, Blizzard's MMORPG was the focus of the episode, Make Love, Not Warcraft, at a time when it was one of the hottest video games on earth. Other games featured on the show include Valve's Counter-Strike, Rock Band, and Call of Duty.
Only one episode of South Park Season 28 remains, to be broadcast on December 10.
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Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
