Because the New Yr, discussions about Arc Raiders have shifted from near-unadulterated reward (for all the pieces however its use of AI voices) to rising considerations over the sport’s dishonest drawback. 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 point of fuckin’ playing?” as he encountered so many points. He was joined by different huge names like Ninja and Nadeshot in making it clear that if one thing didn’t change quickly, the high-profile gamers have been prone to transfer on to different video games.
On the similar time, others have been complaining that PC gamers have been capable of entry the Unreal Engine console inside the sport and swap off varied visible settings such that they may see different gamers with successfully supernatural imaginative and prescient. By January 13, Embark launched a brand new patch that nerfed a few parts 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 speculated to have been out there. And this all adopted an announcement on the sport’s Discord that there were longer-term plans in place for addressing the broader dishonest considerations.
At the moment, it appears, Embark has begun higher wielding the banhammer. In response to 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 photos 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 consumer @aimkeyx begins, “Permanently suspended,” with accompanying textual content studying:
“Your account has been permanently suspended for behavior that violates our code of conduct. Due to the severity of your violation, access to your account will not be restored.”
This can be a huge step up from the 30-day bans that have been being issued beforehand.
The few examples we’ve been capable of finding to date appear to give attention to 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. Whereas the previous may appear unlikely to work usually sufficient for an individual to make sure to match up, you must consider that ought to a streamer have tens of 1000’s of viewers, there may very well be a few hundred individuals making an attempt to cheat this manner, making the possibilities of somebody managing it quite a bit increased. And naturally as soon as in the identical foyer, they will use the livestream footage to realize a bonus over the streamer. Nevertheless it does appear to recommend that Embark is taking the difficulty significantly.
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 steered it may very well be as a result of Tfue introduced up the console on his stream to point out the way it may very well be exploited, though he claims he didn’t really use it. Others made unsupported accusations about the usage of 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, moderately 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 technique to play? That is my favourite Arc Raiders clip of all time:
