ARC Raiders Announces Account Penalty After Exploitation Investigation

Following a recent duplicate exploit, Embark Studios has concluded its investigation into the issue, give ARC Raiders players gain insight into that process while announcing “enforcement actions” to accounts deemed to have exploited it. Since its launch on October 7, 2025, ARC Raiders has been a smash hit for Embark Studios, hitting impressive player milestones, selling incredibly well and even winning multiple gaming industry awards. Even with all the success, the way for ARC Raiders has not always been smooth.

While there have been minor frustrations here and there, especially with some balance changes, ARC Raiders has seemingly managed to avoid major controversies and pitfalls that some games fall into. However, things changed recently due to ARC Raiders hit its first major controversy with a February update that introduced a glitch that allowed players to duplicate items. Many in the community were frustrated and disillusioned with the bug, as some players took the opportunity to generate items like Trigger Nades and spam them, hurting the overall playability of the game. Even worse, players then discovered an infinite ammo bug after a hotfix to address the duplication issue, compounding the community's frustration.

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Over 16,000 ARC Raiders fans agree that the game is in desperate need of a fix

Thousands of fans are calling on Embark Studios to fix an ARC Raiders issue as soon as possible, and it's not about exploits or bugs.

ARC Raiders Reveals Account Bans and Penalties

While Embark once again moved quickly to quick fix the infinity ammo ARC Raidersthe studio announced plans to audit accounts it deemed to have duplicated excessive amounts of items. The vague wording left many players wondering how the studio would assess accounts on a case-by-case basis and set a specific limit for punishment. Others argued that the exploit was a mistake caused by Embark itself, not something players did on purpose, so a penalty or ban seemed unfair.

Regardless, Embark confirmed that its lengthy investigation has finally concluded and that it was ready to hand out penalties. In an attempt at transparency, Embark's blog delved into why the investigation took time despite many in the community calling for swift action. Embark wanted to act with fairness and accuracy, taking action on what it could “define, prove and stand by”, including validation reports against the data, confirming exploit use, its impact and removing any unintended or unintended behaviour. Ultimately, the blog indicated that the studio only wants to act once, with both intent and confidence that it has done the right thing since this is the first time Embark has had to deal with an incident of this scale in ARC Raiders.

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Once the investigation is complete, the studio will now take action against accounts that have been identified as meeting the criteria above. Penalties are based on severity and overall impact on the game, ranging from simple warnings for those who had a low impact or abused the bug on a limited basis, to bans for more serious cases where the impact was more significant to the in-game economy or to other players. Additionally, any coins earned by using exploits are also removed. Embark ended his blog by thanking players for reporting the issues and assuring everyone that not only are they taking this seriously, the studio has already improved their detection and tracking systems, safeguards, and internal review tools to hopefully prevent issues like this in the future.

Reaction to the news has been mixed, with some fans thanking the studio for cracking down on exploiters and trying to protect and safeguard the experience. But, as expected, there has also been a wave of push-back from others who feel like punishing ARC Raiders players to use a glitch introduced by Embark is harsh, especially if the suspension number is higher than expected. The argument is that the exploit was introduced and not picked up quickly enough, giving players time to use it. There's even a small faction that feels bans aren't enough, forcing Embark to take stronger action against some streamers and YouTubers who highlighted the exploits of others.