Arc Raiders devs are cracking down even harder on cheaters with tougher punishments and improved anti-cheat to better deal with what Embark acknowledges is an ongoing situation.
In a lengthy statement posted to Twitter, executive producer Aleksander Grøndal reiterates that Embark takes cheating "incredibly seriously," spending "a lot of time and money in the ongoing fight against unfair play." While the game's anti-cheat team is "continually working" on blocking cheats and making unfair play harder to pull off, the lead acknowledges that Embark hasn't shared much about its efforts, sometimes intentionally so not to give cheaters a heads up on the changes.
"Do know that our silence is not indifference to the issue," Grøndal says. "And today, we're going to give you a better sense of where we’ve made progress and where we’re continuing to invest our efforts."
So, where are things at? Importantly, "Our cheat detection systems are getting considerably stronger month by month," Grøndal begins. "In addition to kernel-level protection from Denuvo and detections from Anybrain, we're using a growing set of in-house models built around machine learning and other data."
These don't function totally autonomously, but the systems will help identify any weird-looking behaviors to detect cheating. Embark is also doing some small-scale testing of Elytra anti-cheat in The Finals right now, which could be incorporated into Arc Raiders in the future, too.
Then, there are the consequences for cheaters who've been caught. As well as continual efforts to make it "harder for repeat offenders to simply create a new account and return to the game," Embark will now be much quicker to bring out the ban hammer. Acknowledging that many fans were critical of the studio's initial decision to give first-time cheaters a second chance, Grøndal now says: "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."
This can go beyond a simple account ban, too. Embark has recently "broadened our use of license restrictions" to stop specific copies of a game being used with a new or different account if one has already been banned on it. "We've tightened our approach to linked accounts as well," Grøndal adds. "If an account has ever been associated with a banned copy of the game, it will also receive a permanent ban."
Embark is also capable of enforcing hardware bans, outright preventing Arc Raiders from running on a system if "we have enough evidence that a single machine is being used for cheating." The studio is currently attempting to "increase the number of systems that we can target with a hardware ban," too, in an effort to prevent repeat offenders using the same systems. "We hope to implement this later in the year, and it should allow us to deploy sanctions to almost all systems caught running cheat software," Grøndal says.
Otherwise, Embark has also been making an effort to prevent players from "queue teaming, where players coordinate to land in the same solo lobby and attack Raiders who queued alone." After splitting up known offenders in matchmaking, Grøndal says that within five days, "we saw 85% fewer players engaging in this behavior. Spoiled raids dropped from around 1 in 50 to 1 in 300, with no meaningful impact to queue times."
Grøndal's conclusion might not be what everyone wants to hear – there's no way that Embark can wipe out cheating completely. But, it can certainly do its best. "Video game cheating is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it will never fully go away," he admits. "What we can do is make cheating as difficult, costly, and short-lived as possible.
"We built ARC Raiders with love and dedication to the craft, and seeing it exploited by cheaters makes us as angry as it makes you. We are making progress, and we're continuing to work to identify cheating more effectively, act on it more quickly, make it harder for repeat offenders to return, and improve the experience for Raiders who are playing fairly."
This all comes ahead of the big Arc Raiders Frozen Trail update on October 8, which Grøndal previously teased feels like a 2.0 for the game.
Arc Raiders will finally let players unlock weapons and items without hunting down blueprints.
