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Arc Raiders has had a big problem with various duplication exploits since its release. In a genre all about looting—finding it and fighting to keep it—that's a pretty nasty issue to have. While these bugs have generally been patched pretty quickly, and often related to specific items (like endless rubber duckies), the spoils of free-flowing loot spread like wildfire among players. A weapon's locker full of Bobcats? Who's gonna say no to that?
YouTuber 'The Gaming Merchant' decided to investigate how these glitches have impacted the game. First, they began by infiltrating PvP servers. While Embark has said matchmaking isn't that binary, the gist is that the more violent you are, the more violent your lobbies tend to be. The Gaming Merchant started encountering very geared-up players consistently—equipped with Bobcats, gold-quality weapon mods like the Kinetic Converter, and even more. That's not an immediate red flag as you'd expect PvP players to be armed to the teeth.
Then they encountered a player who murdered them and dropped a mountain of Bobcats on the ground, touting via voice chat that they had even more stockpiled in their stash. Hard to argue they're all legitimately acquired, if you ask me.
Venturing into Facebook and Discord groups, it's clear that there are even some people buying and selling various in-game weapons and equipment for real money for some reason. How's this all acquired? More than likely from item duping or other dubious methods like third-party tools. I doubt these services do too well, but they do exist, despite breaking Embark's terms of service.
From The Gaming Merchant's research, it seems as though a good deal of this item duping and trading is handled on Asian servers—you can tweak this in the settings menu at any time. My guess is that it's quieter over on the Asian servers, so easier to arrange dealings with other players. Some of the players they encountered had inventories full of duped gear, and even admitted to trading the items, which can then be taken into other server regions.
Even though the latest duping glitch might be patched, history has shown that it's more or less a matter of time until a new one is discovered, or a new tool comes along for cheaters to abuse. And the effects of these exploits are apparent, especially for those playing in PvP inclined lobbies. Just a quick glance at Reddit, and you're bound to come across someone (rightfully) moaning about such exploits.
Since Arc Raiders' Expedition wipe system is optional, there's little to counteract economy-breaking issues like this outside of weapon degradation and, ideally, banning these accounts and patching the holes. Even those who do leave on Expeditions will frequently use friends to 'mule' for them and hold onto gear.
With how the in-game item economy has been manipulated by numerous exploits since launch, mandatory wipes sure sound pretty good to me now.
