Arc Raiders has seen a fairly steady decline in its player count throughout 2026, and one potential reason is the sheer number of cheaters. It’s an issue that is frequently cited on social media as being rampant in PvP-focused lobbies (as opposed to the friendlier PvE lobbies, since the game has aggression-based matchmaking), not to mention the content creators who have stopped playing due to being targeted by cheaters.
Over the last year, developer Embark Studios has rolled out a number of updated aimed to improve the anti-cheat systems in place, but from the outside looking in, it may seem like the studio is fighting a losing battle. Cheating is still so prevalent, after all — mostly in the form of players gaining unfair advantages in PvP, such as aimbots, wallhacks, revealing every player’s location, or the ability to self-revive. However, in-game exploits without any third-party software have also been a recurring problem, mostly to do with item duplication glitches.
In a chat with executive producer Aleksander Grøndal ahead of the Frozen Trail reveal, I asked him about this ongoing cheating epidemic, and the studio’s plans to deal with it.
Arc Raiders studio has a plan in place for cheating
“Cheating is interesting,” he said. “It’s like every single multiplayer game that I’ve worked on has had challenges with cheaters, and the cheating industry is so large right now. So we’re continuously improving and dealing with that situation. Is it as fast as everyone would’ve wanted us to? Perhaps not. But we have some pretty good tools in place, and we do actually take a lot of actions against the situation. The problem is that a lot of the things linger around on the internet for a long time, so even if we fix certain things, there might still be videos showing things that aren’t really around anymore.”
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Grøndal was reluctant to go into detail on their specific actions, and understandably so. After all, the more details he shares, the more info the cheaters have about how to bypass and manipulate the anti-cheat measures. However, he did reveal that they have “employed a multitude of technologies to address the situation; some are instant, but some are more about looking retroactively at data. We are continuously evaluating and working with our partners on what the best next steps are, and we’re also working on new internal systems that we can deploy.”
He also clarified that the forthcoming Frozen Trail update won’t bring any specific anti-cheat updates on its Oct. 8 release, but that’s because they’re “continuously happening more quietly on the back side of things. We are continuously adding, improving, dealing, and taking action against the situation.”