How Arc Raiders Is Fighting Cheaters and Exploits

Arc Raiders arrived with a striking aesthetic, tense firefights, and an ambitious blend of PvE and PvP in an extraction-style format. What the developers at Embark Studio didn’t fully anticipate was just how aggressively players would probe its systems for loopholes, wallhacks, and meta-breaking exploits. The result is a live-service game that feels less like a finished product and more like a high-stakes tug-of-war between designer intent and player ingenuity.

This article explores how Arc Raiders’ structure invites edge-case behavior, why cheating and exploitation escalate so quickly in competitive online games, and what Embark is doing to “waterproof” its experience. Along the way, it connects Arc Raiders’ situation to broader trends in extraction shooters and live-service design.

Arc Raiders in a Nutshell: A High-Tension PvPvE Experiment

Arc Raiders positions itself at the intersection of co-op PvE and adversarial PvP. Squads drop into a large map, scavenge for gear and resources while battling AI-controlled threats, and then try to escape via extraction. In that sense, it shares DNA with games like Escape from Tarkov and The Cycle: Frontier, but with a more stylized sci-fi presentation and a strong emphasis on movement, positioning, and mid-range gunfights.

Several features make Arc Raiders particularly vulnerable to exploit-hunting behavior:

• High-stakes inventory: Extracting with loot preserves your gains; dying can mean losing valuable gear.
• Limited extraction points: Chokepoints where the tension spikes and player interaction is forced.
• Complex terrain and verticality: Lots of cover, interiors, and elevation changes that create line-of-sight quirks.
• Team coordination: Squads can chain abilities, gadgets, and positioning in ways designers might not always foresee.

Any system that amplifies risk and reward tends to amplify the temptation to skirt the edges of the rules. Arc Raiders is no exception.

When Creativity Turns to Degeneracy

Every competitive game develops “degenerate” strategies—lines of play that technically obey the rules but bypass the spirit of fair competition. In Arc Raiders, the push toward degeneracy has shown up in several ways:

• Wallhacks and vision exploits: Players using unauthorized software or abusing engine quirks to see enemies through walls or terrain.
• Positioning tricks: Parkour routes or jump angles that put players in spots where they can shoot out but are nearly impossible to hit in return.
• Extraction cheese: Tactics that minimize risk during extraction, such as abusing geometry, timing, or unintended state changes.
• Macro-level gaming of the system: Queue dodging, matchmaking manipulation, or playstyle optimization that avoids real fights while maximizing rewards.

Developers typically expect some of this. What seems to have caught Embark off guard is how quickly players honed in on wallhacks and systemic loopholes that directly undermine Arc Raiders’ core fantasy: tense, skill-based firefights where information is limited and positioning matters.

Why Extraction Shooters Magnetize Cheaters

Arc Raiders is not alone; extraction shooters as a genre have consistently drawn high levels of cheating and exploit development. There are structural reasons for that.

Research on cheating in online games highlights how strong competitive motivation, perceived unfairness, and high stakes correlate with higher cheating prevalence. A 2022 study in the journal Computers in Human Behavior Reports found that players who place heavy emotional value on winning are more likely to rationalize cheating as acceptable under some conditions.¹ Extraction shooters practically manufacture those emotional conditions by design.

What “Waterproofing the Experience” Really Means

Embark has described its ongoing effort as having to “waterproof” Arc Raiders—plugging every hole that allows players to peek outside the intended boundaries. In practice, that usually involves a mix of technical anti-cheat, design tweaks, and live-ops policy.

1. Technical Anti-Cheat Measures

Modern anti-cheat systems use several layers of defense:

• Client-side detection: Monitoring for known cheat signatures, suspicious memory access, or unapproved modifications to game files.
• Server-side validation: The server double-checks whether actions the client claims are physically possible given input timings, velocities, and line-of-sight.
• Behavioral analytics: Looking for statistical outliers—players whose accuracy, reaction speeds, or awareness are so anomalous that they suggest tool-assisted play.

Publishers like Riot and Activision Blizzard have publicly documented this layered approach for games such as Valorant, League of Legends, and Call of Duty: Warzone. Their anti-cheat systems use kernel-level drivers, server heuristics, and ban waves to counter evolving cheats.² While Arc Raiders is not identical, it faces a similar arms race: every patch that fixes an exploit incentivizes cheat developers to search for another vector.

2. Level Design and Line-of-Sight Fixes

Wallhacks aren’t always purely a hacking issue. Sometimes, visual bugs and geometry quirks reveal more information than intended. Embark’s “waterproofing” therefore has to address:

• Occlusion issues: Fixing meshes and collision so players can’t see or shoot through what should be solid cover.
• Out-of-bounds spots: Closing off areas where players can clip into geometry or reach unintended vantage points.
• Visibility exploits: Adjusting lighting, particle densities, or foliage to prevent graphics settings from becoming a vision hack.

In extraction shooters, controlling line-of-sight around extraction zones is particularly critical. If one side can consistently occupy near-invulnerable angles, the entire loop of risk/reward around extraction collapses.

3. Systemic Adjustments to Risk and Reward

Sometimes, the healthiest change is to the underlying economic or progression systems. If Arc Raiders rewards ultra-passive play or extremely high-risk ambush tactics too heavily, it nudges players toward degenerate strategies that may look indistinguishable from cheating to victims.

Typical systemic levers include:

• Adjusting loot distribution: Spreading rewards so players don’t feel compelled to camp a single choke point.
• Modifying extraction conditions: Introducing multiple extraction options, dynamic extraction events, or penalties for certain behaviors.
• Rebalancing progression: Ensuring that losing some gear doesn’t feel catastrophic, reducing the emotional drive to cheat “just this once.”

Community Behavior: From Tryhards to Tool-Assisted

Not all “degeneracy” in Arc Raiders is driven by external cheats. Some of it comes from players using extreme but legitimate tactics. Distinguishing between the two is an ongoing challenge for any live service team.

In many competitive titles, a subset of players will:

• Exploit animation cancels and movement tech to break expected timing windows.
• Abuse matchmaking systems by dodging unfavorable lobbies or smurfing in lower-skill brackets.
• Farm lower-risk objectives while letting others do the hard fighting, then third-party weakened squads near extraction.

These behaviors aren’t inherently cheating, but they can generate a similar feeling of unfairness. The key for developers is to:

• Identify which behaviors are simply high-level play.
• Clarify which behaviors are against the rules via clear policies.
• Design systems that gently steer players away from toxic but technically legal strategies.

Arc Raiders’ mixed PvPvE environment makes this line especially blurry, because the game simultaneously needs to support cautious, PvE-focused players and hyper-aggressive PvP hunters.

Lessons from Other Live-Service Shooters

Embark is not the first studio to be surprised by its community. Looking at other games helps illustrate how the situation might evolve.

Escape from Tarkov

Escape from Tarkov has struggled with a persistent perception of rampant wallhacks and aimbots. Community frustration peaked when prominent streamers and players highlighted suspicious behavior and inadequate anti-cheat enforcement. Battlestate Games responded with multiple ban waves and changes to its networking and reporting systems, but the perception lagged the reality. The lesson for Arc Raiders is clear: technical fixes must be paired with visible communication and transparency to rebuild trust.

Call of Duty: Warzone

Activision’s introduction of the RICOCHET Anti-Cheat system for Warzone and other Call of Duty titles shows how aggressive some publishers have become. RICOCHET uses both kernel-level drivers and server-side tools, and Activision has publicly detailed “mitigations” like damage shields that cause cheaters’ bullets to do zero damage while still letting honest players win fights.² It’s a theatrical approach, but it also demonstrates how psychological design can be added to technical enforcement.

Apex Legends and Valorant

Respawn’s Apex Legends and Riot’s Valorant highlight the importance of constant iteration. Both studios maintain dedicated anti-cheat teams, issue dev blogs about detection methods, and tweak map design to reduce abuse. Riot in particular has emphasized from launch that anti-cheat is “part of the game,” not an afterthought.³ For Embark, embracing that philosophy early may help align community expectations with reality.

Design Strategies to Reduce Exploit Pressure

Beyond patching specific exploits, Arc Raiders can adopt broader design strategies that naturally reduce the payoff for cheating or abuse.

1. Make Information More Contestable

If wallhacks give cheaters perfect information, one partial counter is to make information a resource all players can contest. For example:

• Deployable sensors that reveal enemies within a radius but are destroyable or short-lived.
• One-off recon abilities that force squads to decide when to “spend” their information advantage.
• Sound design that rewards attentive listening, making information feel skill-based, not random.

When legitimate tools provide powerful but constrained intel, the relative advantage of illegal wallhacks diminishes, and suspicious behavior becomes easier to spot.

2. Diversify Viable Playstyles

Degenerate metas often arise when one playstyle is markedly more efficient than others. To combat this, designers can:

• Ensure both aggressive and cautious squads have paths to success.
• Introduce dynamic objectives that reward mobility rather than stationary camping.
• Balance AI threats so that being too loud or too passive carries its own risks.

If Arc Raiders recognizes that it hosts distinct audiences—PvE enjoyers, PvP thrill-seekers, and hybrid players—it can tune its systems so each group has a fair and fun path rather than forcing everyone into a single optimal strategy.

3. Calibrate Punishment and Forgiveness

Excessive punishment magnifies the appeal of exploits. Research on player motivation suggests that while risk and loss can increase engagement, they work best when losses are seen as recoverable rather than catastrophic.⁴ In Arc Raiders’ context, that might mean:

• Providing partial insurance for certain gear tiers.
• Ensuring baseline gear is always available so players can quickly re-enter the game.
• Giving out modest progression rewards even on failed raids.

When players feel they can bounce back from failure, the psychological justification for cheating—“I can’t afford to lose”—becomes weaker.

How Players Can Help Keep Arc Raiders Fair

The burden of maintaining a healthy ecosystem doesn’t fall solely on Embark. The community has agency too. Players can contribute by:

• Reporting suspicious behavior: Use in-game reporting tools to flag potential cheaters with as much detail as possible.
• Avoiding exploit propagation: Resist the urge to make viral tutorials for still-unpatched exploits; report them privately instead.
• Separating skill from suspicion: Recognize that some players are simply very good, and not every surprising play is evidence of cheating.
• Engaging constructively: Provide feedback on map layouts, visibility issues, or meta-defining strategies that feel unhealthy.

Healthy competitive communities often develop informal norms that discourage exploit abuse even when it’s technically allowed. Streamers, content creators, and clan leaders play an outsized role here; if they normalize exploit use, the broader player base tends to follow.

FAQs: Arc Raiders, Cheating, and Exploits

Is cheating more common in Arc Raiders than in other shooters?

It’s difficult to quantify across games, because studios rarely publish detailed statistics. However, extraction shooters as a category tend to attract above-average cheating due to persistent progression and high-stakes gameplay. Arc Raiders is dealing with the same pressures that have affected Tarkov-style games and battle royales.

Are all weird angles and off-meta tactics considered exploits?

No. Many unusual strategies are simply examples of creative, high-level play. An exploit generally involves abusing a bug, unintended interaction, or third-party tool in a way that developers explicitly consider outside the game’s rules. If Embark patches a behavior or names it in patch notes as unacceptable, it’s more clearly an exploit.

What is Embark likely doing behind the scenes to combat wallhacks?

While specifics aren’t fully public, industry-standard approaches include client-side anti-cheat software, server-side validation of line-of-sight and hit registration, behavior analysis to detect suspicious performance, and regular ban waves. The studio is also likely auditing level design and occlusion issues that can accidentally reveal information.

Can design changes really reduce cheating, or is it purely a technical issue?

Design matters. While technical anti-cheat is essential, systems that reduce perceived unfairness, soften catastrophic loss, and provide legitimate ways to gain information can lower both the motivation and impact of cheating. Good design doesn’t eliminate cheats but makes them less attractive and easier to detect.

What’s the long-term outlook for Arc Raiders if exploits keep appearing?

All live-service games face a continuous cycle of exploit discovery and patching. The long-term outlook depends less on whether exploits exist and more on how quickly Embark responds, how transparent they are, and whether the core experience remains compelling. If the studio can iterate rapidly and keep communication clear, Arc Raiders can grow stronger as its systems become more “waterproof.”

Conclusion: A Stress Test for Embark’s Vision

Arc Raiders was always going to be stress-tested by its community. Extraction shooters magnify every design choice, and the reward structure inevitably attracts players who will bend and sometimes break the rules. What Embark is encountering now—a wave of wallhacks, geometry abuse, and meta-breaking tactics—is less a unique disaster and more a rite of passage for ambitious online shooters.

The real story lies in how the studio responds: tightening its technical defenses, iterating on map and system design, and working with (not against) its most dedicated players to identify weak points. If Embark can embrace that process and communicate openly, Arc Raiders’ current degeneracy might one day be remembered less as a crisis and more as the crucible in which a durable, fair, and fiercely competitive shooter was forged.