ARC Raiders will punish players, as they used an exploit. However, the community believes that punishments are unlikely. The team behind the shooter, Embark Studios, is considered too lenient towards cheaters.
In ARC Raiders, a bug allowed players to duplicate items an unlimited number of times. Players complained that the shooter became nearly unplayable because of it. The developer has since fixed the exploit and stated, that they intend to punish players who exploited it.
Overall, the community seems quite relaxed about this. The developers have always been forgiving towards exploiters and cheaters in the past.
Community considers ARC Raiders developers “soft” on cheaters
What does the community say about this? Initially, they are not overly concerned about the announced punishments. Some explain that Embark Studios has previously handled cheaters and scammers quite leniently. Punishments have been mild, if any were issued at all, and that is unlikely to change significantly. One user writes on Reddit.com:
It [the statement] might scare some kids if they see the post, but they have been lenient towards exploiters and cheaters so far. I’m not sure why they would suddenly decide to be strict now.
Cheaters have been an issue in ARC Raiders for a while
Cheaters have long been causing trouble in ARC Raiders. In one case, this even escalated to Embark Studios banning numerous players. However, they simply bought the game again and continued to cheat. Cheaters are repeatedly caught, but real punishments are rare. And scammers keep appearing: sometimes relatively harmless, when thousands of rubber ducks appear in the game world, in other cases quite detrimental to the enjoyment of the game, by allowing players to walk through walls.
On the other hand, there are currently no solid statistics on how many players have been banned so far. Recently, the head of ARC Raiders stated that they want to ban tens of thousands of players, but they “must ensure that we are locking out those who deserve to be banned” (via frvr.com).
Account bans are at least a topic that many in the community currently criticize. Account bans do not help anyone. If people were actually banned, they would just buy the game again, create a new account, and continue cheating.
Many users have already demanded that Embark Studios should prefer hardware bans. This would make cheating significantly more difficult.
At least: When cheaters are banned, however, the developers do not just ban the troublemakers; they also take good care of the victims of the hackers. You can read more about this on MeinMMO: ARC Raiders bans cheaters from the game but also considers the victims
