'I'm going to be sick': Arc Raiders players react with an appropriate level of revulsion after discovering Embark committed the cardinal sin of placing a stop sign in a weird spot

A raider points their gun at a stop sign in Arc Raiders.

(Image credit: Embark Studios)

One of the greatest strengths of Arc Raiders is its visual atmosphere. Its post-apocalyptic environments are richly imagined, evoking a textured, near-tangible sense of place and passage of time through details that seem intricately considered—except one.

As spotted by redditor TNT_Owl, the Spaceport map features an oversight so glaring, so ill-conceived, so obscene that it casts doubt on the entire aesthetic enterprise of Arc Raiders in a way that not even its lifeless AI vendors and barks could. It's an insult. It's an affront. It's—well, it's a stop sign that's positioned kinda funny.

This stop sign on spaceport is backwards 🚧 from r/ArcRaiders

I'll give you a moment to collect yourself.

With a series of MS Paint-annotated screenshots, TNT_Owl presents a damning discovery: West of the Spaceport's Rocket Assembly, there's a stop sign that defies all roadway sensibilities, placed by an intersection in such a way that it's impossible to parse which traffic is meant to observe it. This is a traffic sign that undermines the very notion and purpose of a traffic sign. This, reader, is the antichrist of roadway regulatory symbology.

As you might expect, other Arc Raiders players have reacted to the discovery with an appropriate level of disgust, with some saying it renders the game "unplayable" or declaring it an "unbelievable oversight." Others, meanwhile, speculated about what connections TNT_Owl might have to famously bureaucratic videogame YouTuber Any_Austin.

A curiously placed stop sign in Arc Raiders. — (Image credit: Embark Studios)

"I'm going to be sick," said redditor FURERABA. "How could Embark do this to us?"

However, while it's clear there's something foul afoot here, I have to disagree with TNT_Owl's assessment that the stop sign is placed backwards. Based on their markings, they seem to think the adjacent lanes are a two-way road.

Instead, as user tired-numb-numb notes, the road in question seems instead to be a dual carriageway—a divided highway where a median separates traffic travelling in opposite directions. What TNT_Owl has identified as an intersection where traffic could be entering the roadway seems instead to be a two-lane exit. That doesn't make the stop sign any less confusing, however.

A dual carriageway in Arc Raiders, with a nearby nonsensical stop sign. — (Image credit: Embark Studios)

In fact, after having considered the stop sign in-game myself, this only makes things worse. If it's not meant to stop traffic entering the carriageway, it's tempting instead to think it's intended to stop vehicles before they enter the nearby pedestrian crossing. But that doesn't explain why, after looking more closely at its orientation, the stop sign is fully perpendicular to the flow of traffic. Who is it for? The pedestrians? Have we abandoned all reason?

But that's not all that's wrong here. It's not hard to miss; if you've looked at these screenshots, I'm sure you see it too. It's as clear as day.

That's right. As Arc Raiders takes place in Italy, this is a stop sign that's failing to observe Articles 144, 145, and 148 of Title 2 of the Regolamento di Esecuzione e di Attuazione del Nuovo Codice della Strada, which stipulate that stop signs must be accompanied by cross-lines featuring the word STOP on the pavement, repeated across each lane of traffic subject to the stop sign, and which must be marked at least 5 meters away from a pedestrian crossing should one exist. That anyone could ignore roadway safety in Italy is a notion so offensive that it borders on the inconceivable.

I'm sure you're just as outraged as I am. Perhaps the robotic violence suffered by humanity in this terrible future wasn't entirely undeserved.

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.

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