For the reason that New Yr, 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 dwell broadcast, uttering “What’s the purpose of fuckin’ taking part in?” 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 had been more likely to transfer on to different video games.
On the similar time, others had been complaining that PC gamers had been capable of entry the Unreal Engine console throughout 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 had 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 purported to have been out there. 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.
Right now, it appears, Embark has begun higher wielding the banhammer. In accordance with 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😭 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.”
It is a massive step up from the 30-day bans that had been being issued beforehand.
The few examples we’ve been capable of finding up to now appear to deal with stream snipers. These are individuals who both intentionally strive 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 might sound unlikely to work usually sufficient for an individual to make sure to match up, it’s a must to consider that ought to a streamer have tens of hundreds of viewers, there could possibly be a few hundred folks making an attempt to cheat this fashion, making the possibilities of somebody managing it rather a lot larger. And naturally as soon as in the identical foyer, they will use the livestream footage to achieve a bonus over the streamer. But it surely does appear to recommend that Embark is taking the problem severely.
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 just a few days in the past. Many instructed it could possibly be as a result of Tfue introduced up the console on his stream to indicate 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. Ultimately 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, relatively than these new everlasting exclusions. It’ll be attention-grabbing 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 approach to play? That is my favourite Arc Raiders clip of all time:
