ARC Raiders Continues to Crack Down on Cheaters

The ongoing war between ARC Raiders developer Embark Studios and cheaters continues to rage on, with the studio now introducing new changes to Steam Family Sharing that will prevent banned players from accessing the shooter on a separate account connected via a family plan. Many ARC Raiders players believe Embark could be doing more to tackle the large number of cheaters present in its extraction shooter, but today’s newly introduced restrictions to Steam Family Sharing are most certainly a step in the right direction.

While ARC Raiders has been a huge success for Embark Studios, picking up Best Multiplayer Game at the 2025 Game Awards, selling more than 12 million copies, and maintaining a strong playerbase, there has been one huge element bringing the shooter down: cheaters. As a live-service title with massive popularity, it’s no surprise that cheat providers have jumped at the chance to ruin the fun for legitimate players. After hackers ran rampant over the Christmas period, Embark returned in early January and addressed the issue by outlining its plans to tackle cheaters in ARC Raiders. The studio said it will be implementing significant changes to its rulesets and deploying new detection mechanisms to identify and remove cheaters, and now it appears to have made another change that fans will be pleased about.

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On February 4, Embark Studios announced new restrictions to Steam Family Sharing. Valve’s popular family program lets users link multiple accounts and share some of their game library with family members. Since its release in October, ARC Raiders has been part of the Steam Family Sharing program, but Embark has now announced it will impose new restrictions on those caught cheating. In a new post on the Embark website, the studio said that any account in a Steam Family caught cheating in ARC Raiders will receive the same ban applied to all accounts sharing the game license.

“If the license owner receives a ban, they can no longer share ARC Raiders through Steam Family Sharing. Any player accessing the game through sharing will need to be removed from the Steam Family and purchase their own copy to continue playing,” Embark has said.

It is worth noting that cheaters currently don’t receive permanent bans when caught. In a rather controversial move, a recent update to ARC Raiders introduced a three-strike ban system, which many players oppose. Anyone caught cheating will first receive a 30-day suspension, followed by a 60-day suspension if caught again, and finally a permanent ban if caught a third time. Many fans believe this is far too lenient and have called for Embark to impose permanent bans on cheaters as soon as they are caught. As of writing, Embark has yet to respond to the backlash and has not revealed whether it will make any adjustments to this system.

While cheaters are ruining the experience for everyone, it appears to be streamers and content creators suffering the most. One of ARC Raiders‘ most popular streamers right now, TheBurntPeanut, even recently threatened to quit the game after being eliminated by cheaters non-stop during a stream. Fellow content creators and professional players, such as Shroud, have also expressed their disappointment with how Embark handles cheaters, saying the studio has “no control” over its own game. Embark has since added a new matchmaking delay feature specifically for streamers, in hopes of reducing the number of stream snipers and cheaters ruining their experience.

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Today’s changes to Steam Family Sharing are most certainly a step in the right direction, but fans are hoping to see Embark continue to crack down on cheaters in the coming weeks and months. New updates for ARC Raiders are released weekly, often introducing new improvements, bug fixes, and more. Fans can look forward to a major new ‘Shrouded Sky’ update at some point this month, which will introduce a new map condition, new ARC threat, a new Raider Deck, and much more. An exact release date for the update has yet to be revealed, but Embark has said it will launch sometime in February.