If you’ve found you’ve been coming up against tougher players in Arc Raiders just recently, that could well be because you’ve been deemed an “aggressive” player.

For the last week or so, players who naturally gravitate to PvP modes and shoot on sight without hesitation have found themselves facing much more aggressive combatants, leading to discussions about whether the team at Embark Studios had quietly introduced “aggression-based” matchmaking (ABMM).

Now, in a new interview, Embark Studios’ Patrick Söderlund has confirmed that that’s “exactly” what it’s done.

“Obviously, first it’s skill-based, of course,” Söderlund said in the interview with GamesBeat. “Then you have solos, duos, and trios. And then we also – since a week ago or so – we introduced a system where we also matchmake based on how prone you are to PvP or PvE.

“So, if your preference is to do PvE, and you have less conflict with players, you’ll get more matched up. Obviously it’s not a full science.”

Asked directly if the change could be described as “aggression-based matchmaking”, he added: “That’s exactly what it is.”

Quite what it means to be “aggressive” or “prone” to PvP or PvE is unclear and likely never will be, to prevent less scrupulous players from gaming the system. It does, however, at least confirm that those who’d felt there’d been a quiet change to how matchmaking worked weren’t imagining it.

This backs up a prior interview with Arc Raiders art director Robert Sammelin, who recently said that when it comes to the extraction shooter’s matchmaking system – which was Steam’s biggest-selling game over the holiday period – player behaviour is indeed a factor in the “complex” process of assigning players to online matches.