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Arc Raiders' has had somewhat of a long struggle with cheaters. It's plagued the extraction shooter pretty much from day one, with the few players who are guilty of it ruining the game for the masses as they'd use wallhacks or extra-sensory perception to ruthlessly hunt down other players.
Over the months since Arc Raiders' launch, Embark have attempted to combat cheaters by targeting Steam family sharing, dishing out strict consequences for those caught in the act, and systematically dolling out ban waves. Embark even recently published a short blog post on the subject, announcing that the studio is still taking the fight to cheaters with their kernel-level anticheat and are looking at more ways to eliminate this behaviour from the game. Which leads us to Denuvo.
Part of the latest Arc Raiders patch notes which introduced the new weapon, durability buffs, and a trader from Topside, also included a segment about Denuvo anti-cheat: "As mentioned in our Ensuring Fair Play article, we want to continue improving our anti-cheat solutions and more accurately detect foul play across the Rust Belt. Following a positive rollout in The Finals, Denuvo anti-cheat will also come to Arc Raiders starting May 19th, initially to a limited player pool, with plans to expand after close monitoring."
It's not uncommon for the mention of Denuvo to ruffle feathers. This anti-cheat is renowned for claims of it plaguing games with performance nerfs and stutters alongside it having ample access to your PC as it's a kernel-level anti-cheat. Embark has addressed some of these concerns, however, as it promises: "We will not be using Denuvo's Digital Rights Management (DRM) service, and are working to ensure minimal impact on performance."
It doesn't seem to be much of an issue anyway though, as most Arc Raiders players seem more concerned about riding their lobbies of cheaters and who will be the first hit with this new anti-cheat rather than concerns about the anti-cheat itself: "If this actually nukes ESP/ wallhack users the game might genuinely recover."
Theories of who exactly the "limited player pool" will encapsulate are floating around with some debating whether it could be distributed by region or PvP lobbies. The consensus so far seems to be that PvP lobbies are where anti-cheat is needed the most, because players using cheats against other players is far worse than using cheats to kill Arcs quicker.
"PvP lobbies are where the majority of cheaters will end up anyways," one player says. "There are still cheaters in PvE lobbies, but none of us PvE players care if they have aimbot or can see our inventory or position anyways, as long as they don't kill us."
Hopefully, this next step in Embark's journey towards fairer play will deliver visible results for players who are tired of being hunted for sport by cheaters. But it doesn't sound as if Embark is dusting its hands of the situation, more so that this is just another step on the road to recovery: "With Denuvo anti-cheat and Anybrain, we are working to strengthen Arc Raiders' systems even further. Keep sending us reports of any information that you believe might help us to do so, it's highly appreciated."
