Embark might be slowing the pace of its monthly updates to ARC Raiders to protect its own. However, it’s clearly not affording cheaters any chances to get past its stringent anti-cheating systems.
And it might only be getting started, as a recent announcement on the game’s blog outlines a stricter response to confirmed instances of cheating. The studio says that an “overly cautious” approach to handing out bans isn’t cutting it, and that “Permanent bans are now standard for all known cheat programs and, as a matter of policy, any account caught using cheats is permanently banned.
“No warnings, no second chances. We’ve also recently broadened our use of license restrictions. These prevent a specific copy of the game associated with a sanction from being used with another account. We’ve tightened our approach to linked accounts as well. If an account has ever been associated with a banned copy of the game, it will also receive a permanent ban.”
That’s quite a line in the sand to draw, and it’s a very welcome position to take against a practice that affords undue advantages to a few at the cost of a fun experience for the larger majority of honest players. We’d personally stop playing a game we feel the need to cheat at, but maybe that’s just us. Either way, Embark has our wholehearted support on this one (even if it’s rather late to this conclusion).
It’s certainly going to make those dynamic loot zones more enjoyable for starters, while that PvE test is coming up soon and is hopefully free of cheaters too. It’s certainly a step in the right direction toward a more honest player base, and hopefully a beacon for other studios to follow suit in the anti-cheating effort.
