Embark Studios has outlined a major overhaul to its anti cheat measures for ARC Raiders, confirming immediate permanent bans for all confirmed cheaters. The developer is combining kernel level security from Denuvo with internal machine learning to issue machine bans and block game licenses. Executive Producer Aleks confirmed the policy shift in a community update, aiming to eliminate solo queue teaming and illicit software abuse.
Embark has discarded its earlier lenient approach in favor of immediate permanent bans. Caught players no longer receive warnings or second chances. The studio now applies license restrictions that permanently lock the specific copy of the game, preventing violators from transferring access to secondary accounts. Any linked account tied to a sanctioned copy receives an identical permanent ban.
Hardware level bans are expanding across the board. The studio lowered the technical threshold required to ban individual machines directly, cutting off repeat offenders from rejoining on the same physical system. While acknowledging that cheat creators continuously attempt to bypass hardware blocks, Embark is engineering a wider targeting solution to lock down offending systems before the end of the year.
The studio runs multiple detection layers to identify illicit software before issuing penalties. Protection relies on Denuvo kernel defenses alongside behavioral detection from Anybrain and internal machine learning models. A human review team oversees all ban appeals to maintain fairness and verify edge cases. The developer also conducts manual reviews of streaming video and social clips to catch blatant gameplay violations.
Looking ahead, Embark plans to expand its toolset with Elytra, a detection system currently undergoing live trials in THE FINALS. Once initial trial testing concludes, the technology will deploy into ARC Raiders to catch emerging exploits.
Unfair play extends beyond third party software to coordinated matchmaking abuse. Players previously attempted queue teaming to enter solo lobbies as an organized unit and eliminate individual players. Embark altered its matchmaking system to detect these coordination patterns and actively split known groups into separate matches.
The matchmaking fix yielded immediate results. Embark recorded an 85% reduction in queue teaming within 5 days of deploying the filter. Corrupted matches dropped from 1 in 50 down to 1 in 300 raids without increasing overall matchmaking wait times. Spontaneous alliances formed during matches through proximity chat remain fully legal, as the restriction exclusively targets prearranged grouping in solo modes.
