Embark has announced a full overhaul of its punishment policy in ARC Raiders. Any account caught cheating now receives a permanent ban on the first offense, with no warnings or second chances. Executive producer Aleks Grøndal openly acknowledged that the studio had been "overly cautious" about permanent bans and should have handled the issue differently earlier.Image unavailableThe punishment system has changed throughout the year. In January, Embark introduced a traditional three-strike ladder: 30 days, then 60 days, then a permanent ban. The community criticized the approach because a one-month suspension for a first cheating offense seemed too lenient. In February, the studio began immediately issuing permanent bans in cases where its anti-cheat systems produced highly reliable detections. On September 30, Embark formalized the new policy. Permanent bans are now the standard for all known cheat programs. Anyone caught cheating receives no warning and no second chance.A sanctioned game license can no longer simply be used with a new account, while accounts associated with a banned copy of the game can also receive permanent bans. Embark is also expanding its use of hardware bans. When the studio has enough evidence that a specific machine was used for cheating, ARC Raiders can be prevented from running on that system. The team is working on broader hardware-ban coverage that it hopes to roll out later this year, allowing sanctions to target almost all systems caught running cheat software.
