Hero image: ARC Raiders. Image: Embark Studios
ARC Raiders is free to play until 7pm AEDT on Monday — and anyone trying it this weekend plays under anti-cheat rules Embark set out only last week.
In a post on Steam on 30 September, executive producer Aleks set out how the studio now detects and punishes cheating, ahead of the Frozen Trail update that went live last night. It opens with an admission.
No second chances
“Early on, we were overly cautious about applying permanent bans to first-time cheaters,” Aleks wrote. “We’ve heard the frustration from the community, and we agree that we should have handled this differently.”
That has now flipped. “Permanent bans are now standard for all known cheat programs and, as a matter of policy, any account caught using cheats is permanently banned. No warnings, no second chances.”
The ban also follows the copy of the game. Licence restrictions stop a sanctioned copy being used on another account, and any account that has ever been linked to a banned copy is banned permanently too.
Hardware bans sit on top of that — Embark says it has lowered the threshold for applying them, and hopes to roll out wider hardware coverage “later in the year”. The post is candid that they are “not a silver bullet”.
How detection works
Detection combines kernel-level protection from Denuvo, detections from Anybrain and a growing set of Embark’s own machine-learning models. A human stays in the loop through the appeals process, and the team also reviews footage posted to YouTube and other platforms.
That is also why a cheater caught on stream isn’t always banned on the spot. The system “analyzes behavior over multiple instances” before acting, to avoid banning legitimate players. Further out, Embark is testing a system called Elytra on a small scale in THE FINALS, with the aim of trying it in ARC Raiders.
Queue teaming
The most concrete number in the post is about teaming — players who coordinate to land in the same solo lobby. Embark started keeping known teaming groups apart in matchmaking, and says that five days later it “saw 85% fewer players engaging in this behavior”. Spoiled raids fell from around 1 in 50 to 1 in 300, with “no meaningful impact to queue times”.
Teaming up with someone you meet mid-raid over proximity chat is still allowed. The target is coordination before the raid starts.
ARC Raiders isn’t the only shooter reworking its defences — we explained Apex Legends’ own anti-cheat switch last month. For anyone trying the game free this weekend, the short version is simple: one detected cheat, one permanent ban.
Source: ARC Raiders (Steam) – An Update on Anti-Cheat, ARC Raiders (Steam) – Play ARC Raiders for free from Oct 8 to Oct 12