Earlier today, Embark Studios announced a hotfix patch for Arc Raiders via the game’s official Discord server. Ironically, the need for an emergency hotfix was due to Discord itself, as it was discovered that the Discord software development kit had somehow been storing “excessive user information” on Arc Raiders’ server members.
That doesn’t quite paint the full picture, however. The full reason behind the sudden need to patch Arc Raiders can be found on Timothy Meadows’ website, in which he outlines “serious privacy and security violations that affect all players using Discord integration with the game.”
According to Meadows’ report, the Arc Raiders Discord SDK opened “a complete Discord gateway connection identical to the one used by the Discord desktop app itself.” As a result, if you linked Arc Raiders and Discord together (via Arc Raiders‘ in-game integration options), all Discord events that occurred were subsequently logged. This includes private DMs between two users. As Meadows explained, “Rather than filtering sensitive events, the SDK logs everything it receives to disk.”
However, Embark Studios’ Discord announcement states that none of this information actually made it off of users’ PCs, as it was apparently only stored locally on the users’ end. “Rest assured that your private and/or personal data was not sent outside your machine and Embark has not (and will not) review or keep such information. We will disable the Discord SDK logging and are conducting a deeper audit to ensure no further issues. If you have questions or concerns, please contact our support team.”
Less than 30 minutes after Embark Studios’ Discord announcement, the hotfix in question went live. According to GamesRadar’s Kaan Serin, they were able to confirm that the hotfix has fully resolved the issue. Still, call me an alarmist if you like, but I have to wonder if any other games have fallen prey to this oddly specific issue. Hopefully, Meadows has a lot of free time on his hands to check.