Because the New 12 months, discussions about Arc Raiders have shifted from near-unadulterated reward (for the whole lot however its use of AI voices) to rising issues over the sport’s dishonest downside. Developer Embark has already began making strikes to enhance this, first eradicating entry to the console within the PC model, and now issuing some fairly surprisingly dramatic bans to these it’s catching stream-sniping.
Issues began getting heated round January 6 when streamer Shroud expressed his frustration throughout a stay broadcast, uttering “What’s the purpose of fuckin’ enjoying?” as he encountered so many points. He was joined by different massive names like Ninja and Nadeshot in making it clear that if one thing didn’t change quickly, the high-profile gamers have been more likely to transfer on to different video games.
On the similar time, others have been complaining that PC gamers have been in a position to entry the Unreal Engine console inside the sport and swap off varied visible settings such that they might see different gamers with successfully supernatural imaginative and prescient. By January 13, Embark launched a brand new patch that nerfed a few components that have been spoiling PvP, whereas additionally stopping key card spoof cheats. This adopted a hotfix that eliminated the console from the PC construct, with the reason that it was by no means imagined to have been accessible. And this all adopted an announcement on the sport’s Discord that there have been longer-term plans in place for addressing the broader dishonest issues.
At the moment, it appears, Embark has begun higher wielding the banhammer. Based on varied posts on Reddit and X, streamers have reported that these gamers participating in stream sniping are lastly receiving retribution, whereas others have been posting pictures of ban messages to social media.
not even half-hour later and theyre banned😭 https://t.co/QxBqjMaGo5 pic.twitter.com/aY2AtwALEC
— aimkey (@aimkeyx) January 16, 2026
And these aren’t 24-hour slaps on the wrist, both. One picture of a ban posted to X by person @aimkeyx begins, “Completely suspended,” with accompanying textual content studying:
“Your account has been completely suspended for habits that violates our code of conduct. Because of the severity of your violation, entry to your account won’t be restored.”
This can be a massive step up from the 30-day bans that have been being issued beforehand.
The few examples we’ve been capable of finding to this point appear to concentrate on stream snipers. These are individuals who both intentionally attempt their luck to get into the identical foyer as a streamer, or use exterior software program to make sure they do ought to the streamer make the error of leaving the UUID for his or her sport session seen on the backside of the display screen. Whereas the previous may appear unlikely to work usually sufficient for an individual to make sure to match up, it’s important to think about that ought to a streamer have tens of 1000’s of viewers, there could possibly be a few hundred folks making an attempt to cheat this manner, making the probabilities of somebody managing it loads greater. And naturally as soon as in the identical foyer, they will use the livestream footage to achieve a bonus over the streamer. However it does appear to recommend that Embark is taking the problem critically.
One streamer who claims to have been caught within the crossfire of all that is Tfue, who discovered he had a 30-day suspension from Arc Raiders a number of days in the past. Many instructed it could possibly be as a result of Tfue introduced up the console on his stream to point out the way it could possibly be exploited, though he claims he didn’t really use it. Others made unsupported accusations about using varied macros, which Tfue strongly denied. Finally the Twitch streamer with 11.4 million followers had his account restored, seeming to recommend it was an error.
Who is aware of! Tfue’s ban was clearly one of many extra common 30-day sin-binnings, reasonably than these new everlasting exclusions. It’ll be fascinating to see if issues enhance for streamers, after which hopefully for the broader PvP viewers for the sport.
In the meantime, can I recommend a much better method to play? That is my favourite Arc Raiders clip of all time:
