Embark Studios has released a new update for ARC Raiders. However, rather than making any balance changes or bringing in new content, the update focuses on fixing a critical security issue with how the PvPvE extraction shooter handles integration with Discord. As caught by distributed systems engineer Timothy Meadows on social media, the security flaw exposes private direct messages (DMs) between Discord users through plaintext in a local game log file.
On discovery of this bug, Embark Studios took to its own official Discord channel to confirm that it has released an update to fix it. The studio also noted that it had no plans to send any of the plaintext Discord DMs outside of the user’s machine. In the meantime, logging for the Discord software development kit (SDK) has been disabled, and Embark is conducting an audit to make sure that these kinds of security risks don’t pop up again.
“Rest assured that your private and/or personal data was not sent outside your machine and Embark has not (and will not) review or keep such information. We will disable the Discord SDK logging and are conducting a deeper audit to ensure no further issues,” wrote the studio.
This hotfix comes just days after ARC Raiders got an update to adjust the drop rate of rare blueprints from First Wave Caches that can be found in maps affected by the Hurricane condition. In a developer note, the studio explained that the drop rate for blueprints was tuned to be too high, and the new lower drop rates are being compensated by increased chance to get higher-tier materials. Despite the lowered drop rates, however, Embark Studios has still noted that First Wave Caches will continue to be a “solid way” for players to get their hands on blueprints.
“The main reason for this change is that the First Wave Caches have been handing out a lot of blueprints, especially given how good players have been at tracking them down and looting them,” explained the studio in the patch notes.
“To help balance that out, we’re bumping up the drop rates for higher-tier materials inside the caches. So while you might see a few fewer blueprints overall, you’ll be getting better materials in return. Caches will still be a solid way to find blueprints, just not to the point where you can reliably walk away from every session with 3–5 of them.”
The last major content drop for ARC Raiders was the Shrouded Sky update, which introduced the Hurricane map condition. The update was released alongside a brand new trailer showcasing what kinds of troubles raiders will have to go through when they step out into the massive storm. Interestingly, the map condition has also seemingly caused strange flying objects to appear in the dense clouds. While Embark Studios is yet to make any statement about the matter, many players have started speculating about what this means for the future of ARC Raiders‘ narrative.
ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Just last month, parent company Nexon confirmed that it had sold 14 million copies since launch.
