Arc Raiders' wall-breaking exploits took so long to fix because they were 'intrinsic to the way the game is built': 'Those things are very risky to patch rapidly'

Arc Raiders extraction shooter — (Image credit: Embark Studios)

Arc Raiders has had its fair share of bugs since launch, some of which were unfortunately pretty game-breaking. Perhaps second only to the recent item duplication glitch was the infamous door glitch, which let players break into locked rooms with just a little shimmy. It was eventually solved not by stopping players from sneaking in, but by turning these rooms into saunas—Embark booby-trapped them with flamethrowers.

Virgil Watkins

Watkins joined Embark Studios as a senior technical designer in October 2021, going on to serve as Arc Raiders' design director since February 2022.

"I know everyone out there thinks like, 'oh, we'll just do this, or just put volumes, or just whatever', but it's inherent, physics-level stuff and networking stuff, and it's intrinsic to the way the game is built," adds Watkins. "And those things are very risky to patch rapidly."

Obviously, it's no good fixing one bug by breaking something even more important somewhere else. I can't imagine what the repercussions of attempting to stop semi-permeable walls would be if done wrong—fully permeable walls? No physical boundaries at all? But I trust that the potential repercussions are dire.

On the other end of the spectrum are glitches like duplication exploits, which Embark had a much faster reaction to: "Stuff like this, where we can see very clear steps involved with it, makes it very easy for us to chase, versus stuff that's far deeper into the engine." In fact, in that case, the team already had a fix planned by the time that it had blown up on social media. As players do, we'd already spawned armies of rubber ducks and Deadlines by the time a hotfix was delivered.

Rory has made the fatal error of playing way too many live service games at once, and somehow still finding time for everything in between. Sure, he’s an expert at Destiny 2, Call of Duty, and more, but at what cost? He’s even sunk 1,000 hours into The Elder Scrolls Online over the years. At least he put all those hours spent grinding challenges to good use over the years as a freelancer and guides editor. In his spare time, he’s also an avid video creator, often breaking down the environmental design of his favourite games. If you can’t track him down, he’s probably lost in a cave with a bunch of dwarves shouting “rock and stone” to no end.

With contributions from

Tim Clark

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