As with any successful multiplayer game, Arc Raiders has attracted a number of bad apples and cheaters over the last few months, but developer Embark Studios’ boss says he can tell the company’s anti-cheat efforts are bearing fruit by the amount of people “trying to get to the studio.”
“We have been pretty aggressive on this,” Embark CEO Patrick Soderlund tells IGN of the developer’s anti-cheat measures. “The game wasn’t prone to so many cheaters in the beginning, but as with all multiplayer games that get successful, this becomes a component, unfortunately. For us as developers, just like a DDoS attack, it’s one of these things that you just have to try and be a step ahead.”
Soderlund says it’s “not always easy” to block bad actors because the second Embark Studios comes up with a solution, cheaters will cook up something else. “The banning process is obviously delicate because we need to make sure that we ban people that deserve to be banned, if that makes any sense,” he adds. “If you take general figures, anywhere between 0.1% to 1% of any multiplayer crowd in a large-scale multiplayer game is cheating, and therefore, to some extent, should get a temporary or a longer, or permanent ban.”
“We’ve started banning players, and why do I know that? Because I see an influx of people trying to get to the studio, and to me. ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything.’ We’re seeing a pretty substantial change in that, but I know that we have banned probably tens of thousands of players so far, that I know. Again, we need to make sure that we get it right. That we are fair, and that, in the case where it’s clear that we didn’t get it right, that we can quickly remedy the situation so that player isn’t affected in an unfair fashion or way,” Soderlund continues.
Just this week, the developer put restrictions on how Arc Raiders is able to be shared across Steam accounts in order to stop nefarious loopholes.
Reported Arc Raiders budget of $75 million is “not too far off,” says Embark head: “We can live for a long time on the money that Arc Raiders has been generating”
