Since the New Year, discussions about Arc Raiders have shifted from near-unadulterated praise (for everything but its use of AI voices) to growing concerns over the game’s cheating problem. Developer Embark has already started making moves to improve this, first removing access to the console in the PC version, and now issuing some quite surprisingly dramatic bans to those it’s catching stream-sniping.
Things started getting heated around January 6 when streamer Shroud expressed his frustration during a live broadcast, uttering “What’s the point of fuckin’ playing?” as he encountered so many issues. He was joined by other big names like Ninja and Nadeshot in making it clear that if something didn’t change soon, the high-profile players were likely to move on to other games.
At the same time, others were complaining that PC players were able to access the Unreal Engine console within the game and switch off various visual settings such that they could see other players with effectively supernatural vision. By January 13, Embark released a new patch that nerfed a couple of elements that were spoiling PvP, while also preventing key card spoof cheats. This followed a hotfix that removed the console from the PC build, with the explanation that it was never supposed to have been available. And this all followed an announcement on the game’s Discord that there were longer-term plans in place for addressing the wider cheating concerns.
Today, it seems, Embark has begun better wielding the banhammer. According to various posts on Reddit and X, streamers have reported that those players engaging in stream sniping are finally receiving retribution, while others have been posting images of ban messages to social media.
not even 30 minutes 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, either. One image of a ban posted to X by user @aimkeyx begins, “Permanently suspended,” with accompanying text reading:
“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 is a big step up from the 30-day bans that were being issued previously.
The few examples we’ve been able to find so far seem to focus on stream snipers. These are people who either deliberately try their luck to get into the same lobby as a streamer, or use external software to ensure they do should the streamer make the mistake of leaving the UUID for their game session visible at the bottom of the screen. While the former might seem unlikely to work often enough for a person to ensure to match up, you have to factor in that should a streamer have tens of thousands of viewers, there could be a couple of hundred people attempting to cheat this way, making the chances of someone managing it a lot higher. And of course once in the same lobby, they can use the livestream footage to gain an advantage over the streamer. But it does seem to suggest that Embark is taking the issue seriously.
One streamer who claims to have been caught in the crossfire of all this is Tfue, who found he had a 30-day suspension from Arc Raiders a few days ago. Many suggested it could be because Tfue brought up the console on his stream to show how it could be exploited, although he claims he didn’t actually use it. Others made unsupported accusations about the use of various macros, which Tfue strongly denied. Eventually the Twitch streamer with 11.4 million followers had his account restored, seeming to suggest it was an error.
Who knows! Tfue’s ban was clearly one of the more regular 30-day sin-binnings, rather than these new permanent exclusions. It’ll be interesting to see if things improve for streamers, and then hopefully for the wider PvP audience for the game.
Meanwhile, can I suggest a far better way to play? This is my favorite Arc Raiders clip of all time:
