In light of its recent three-strike banning policy in ARC Raiders, Embark Studios has been emphatic about taking a harder stance against cheaters in the extraction shooters. In an interview with IGN, CEO Patrick Söderlund doubled down on this, noting that the developers have been “pretty aggressive on this.”
When asked about how the new anti-cheat process has been doing since its introduction last month, Söderlund said, “I’m not going to give you a specific number, but I can give you ballpark. We have been pretty aggressive on this. The game wasn’t prone to so many cheaters in the beginning, but as with all multiplayer games that get successful, this becomes a component, unfortunately. For us as developers, just like a DDoS [Distributed Denial-of-Service] attack, it’s one of these things that you just have to try and be a step ahead.”
Söderlund went on to talk about how cheaters tend to react quite quickly when anti-cheat measures are introduced. Because of this, the studio has to be proactive in introducing new processes. This ultimately led to the three-strike banning system.
“It’s not always easy because the minute you do something, the minute you come up with something, they’ve come up with something else to do,” he explained. The banning process is obviously delicate because we need to make sure that we ban people that deserve to be banned, if that makes any sense. If you take general figures, anywhere between 0.1% to 1% of any multiplayer crowd in a large-scale multiplayer game is cheating, and therefore, to some extent, should get a temporary or a longer, or permanent ban.”
The response to the new anti-cheat process has been working quite well for Embark Studios, with Söderlund citing the fact that the developers have been seeing “an influx” of players trying to get in touch about appealing their bans. So far, tens of thousands of players have been banned from the game.
“We’ve started banning players, and why do I know that? Because I see an influx of people trying to get to the studio, and to me. ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything.’ We’re seeing a pretty substantial change in that, but I know that we have banned probably tens of thousands of players so far, that I know. Again, we need to make sure that we get it right. That we are fair, and that, in the case where it’s clear that we didn’t get it right, that we can quickly remedy the situation so that player isn’t affected in an unfair fashion or way,” he said.
ARC Raiders is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Since its October 2025 launch, the PvPvE extraction shooter has been quite successful, leading to even Embark Studios parent company Nexon being surprised. In a recent interview, Nexon CEO Junghun Lee confessed that the title ended up being twice as successful as he had initially anticipated.
Embark Studios also recently revealed its new roadmap for ARC Raiders, with quite a bit of content planned for release over the coming months.
