ARC Raiders has a hacker problem, according to streamers who actively seek out PvP at every turn

Have you ever run into a hacker in ARC Raiders? The biggest multiplayer game of the moment has an issue with cheating, apparently.

I personally haven’t found any cheating players. At least, I’ve never suspected anyone of being a hacker. But my social media timelines lately have been filled with players complaining about facing hackers in the extraction shooter, and the complaints have been getting more frequent of late.

An explanation for this may be that ARC Raiders uses a sort of “aggression-based matchmaking,” according to a recent GamesBeat interview with Embark CEO Patrick Söderlund, so the game will match you up with players based on how likely you are to engage with others.

I’m generally a pretty peaceful Raider (unless I am feeling quite devious), moving about the map trying to do my quests or pick up loot for whatever the current goal may be, so I doubt I’d be the kind of player who’d end up running into a cheater. But for those who sweat it up in trios and chase down “goop” with their friends, or other sweaty streamers, it appears that you’re more likely to run into others who are hacking or cheating.

Thankfully, ARC Raiders has a mechanic where you will sometimes be given back loot that you lost if you lost to someone who is found to be cheating in some way. Still, though, according to players like Ninja or Nadeshot, the hacking is out of control.

“My experience on ARC Raiders over the last week has been hell,” Nadeshot said in a recent lengthy post on X/Twitter. “Just to be clear, I love this game and think it’s already moved in to my personal top 10 all time. But the egregious amount of cheating genuinely might be worse than peak Call of Duty. I’m not trying to bring negativity to the game because I know this type of dialogue can spread on socials like a disease but I genuinely cannot get through an entire raid without a Steam profile that is level 0 or an account that has multiple game bans and VAC bans on record.”

Is this just streamers whining to whine, or is there a legit hacker problem in ARC Raiders? According to one commenter on the YouTube video below from Ninja, the content creators are not alone in these specific struggles.

“Thank god you’re making a video on this,” they said. “The game is literally unplayable if you’re half decent cause you get queued with hackers at least 1/3 games.”

Have you seen any cheaters in your ARC Raiders games? Let me know in the comments below, because I’m curious to see if any issue is as widespread as some are making it out to be, or if it’s just a loud minority on socials.