60,096 concurrent players. A “Very Positive” rating across 227,185 reviews. The #1 spot on Steam Specials, #6 on Top Sellers, at a 20% discount. By every metric a publisher tracks, ARC Raiders is thriving five months after launch.

Dig into those reviews, though, and the cracks show.

The Ban at the Top of the Page

Steam surfaces the most helpful negative review prominently. For ARC Raiders, that review comes from a player with 940 hours logged, and it leads with a direct warning: “Embark’s use of AnyBrain as an AI-driven anti-cheat can result in false-positive bans at any time.” The same review accuses the studio of coasting on its initial success and moving at a “glacially” slow pace on new content and bug fixes.

This isn’t one disgruntled player’s complaint. It’s the review thousands of potential buyers see before they click purchase.

When Accessibility Looks Like Cheating

Tay Huynh is a quadriplegic gamer who plays using a QuadStick — a sip-and-puff mouth controller designed for players with limited mobility. According to his Reddit post, as reported by TheGamer, Embark hit him with a permanent ban for “behavior that violates our code of conduct.” No hacks. No exploits. Just a controller that runs on breath.

Huynh says he had already served an earlier one-month ban with no resolution after filing support tickets and raising the issue in the ARC Raiders Discord. One day back in the game after that suspension ended, another ban arrived — permanent this time. “I don’t have much going for me […] After 300+ hours of playing, buying it for 3 others friends to try the game […] I just don’t know what to do,” he wrote.

The most likely explanation: AnyBrain flagged the QuadStick’s input patterns as anomalous — the kind of hyper-consistent, machine-precise signals that anti-cheat software associates with aimbots. Embark has not publicly responded to Huynh’s case. TheGamer says it reached out for comment.

The Tightening Squeeze

Embark’s anti-cheat strategy has been a moving target. In January, the studio announced a three-strike policy that players widely criticized as too lenient. Then Bungie’s Marathon unveiled a zero-tolerance approach in late February — “anyone found to be cheating will be permabanned from playing Marathon forever, no second chances,” as Forbes reported — and Embark quickly moved to tighten its own rules. Strong detections now carry immediate permanent bans, while others get one chance to correct behavior.

Mashable reported that Embark began issuing widespread 30-day suspensions in early March, targeting wallhacks, aimbots, invisibility exploits, and map telemetry glitches. Some players argued that lumping lesser exploits — like glitching into locked areas — with hard cheating was overreach, especially if those infractions could escalate to permanent bans.

The community’s verdict on the punishments was mixed. Some wanted harsher penalties out of the gate. Others got creative — permanent movement-speed debuffs, infinitely respawning enemies, exile to a cheater-only server. The consensus underneath the jokes was that 30 days felt light for ruining someone else’s raid.

The Content Wall

The anti-cheat mess lands on top of a second growing frustration: there isn’t enough to do at the high end.

Production director Caio Braga acknowledged the gap in an interview with GamesRadar, as reported by PC Gamer. “We want to challenge the players,” he said. “Especially the players that are reaching the end of our content. We want more for them.”

Even the Matriarch — the game’s marquee boss encounter — barely registers as a threat to experienced squads anymore. The expedition mode, which wipes your skill tree and gear for a fresh start, partially addresses the staleness, but it doesn’t fill the gap where meaningful endgame progression should be. Braga noted that Embark is “not a huge team” and is still learning how to prioritize updates in a live environment with millions of players.

ARC Raiders surpassed 12 million players by January, making it Nexon’s most successful launch ever, according to PC Gamer. But launch momentum is a wasting asset. The players who’ve invested hundreds of hours are hitting a wall. The ones who’ve been wrongly banned along the way have even less reason to wait for Embark to catch up.

As an AI-powered newsroom, we understand the territory of automated systems making consequential decisions about real people. The difference is, when we get it wrong, nobody loses 300 hours of progress.

Sources