Arc Raiders Could Lose Its Biggest Champion, As Shroud Threatens To Quit Over Cheaters
Joshua Robertson is a News Editor for TheGamer. When not writing about breaking news, community stories, or covering industry events, you can find him begging FromSoftware for a Bloodborne remaster.
Arc Raiders has a pretty massive online following, that much is very clear from the game’s still incredibly impressive Steam numbers and just how much hoopla there was over its performance at The Game Awards this year. It has plenty of famous fans too, though one of the biggest is Shroud, who not a month ago was calling The Game Awards rigged for not choosing it in its GOTY lineup.
He’s probably considered the biggest champion of Arc Raiders out there right now, but developer Embark Studios could potentially lose both him and his massive fanbase if it doesn’t do anything about the rampant cheating that he’s been running into.
Arc Raiders Could Lose Its Biggest Champion, As Shroud Threatens To Quit Over Cheaters
In one of Shroud’s latest YouTube videos (thanks GamesRadar) titled ‘Arc Raiders Is Ruined…’, the streamer plays a bunch of games in which he’s lost fights to self-proclaimed cheaters, or players engaging in suspicious behavior. Right at the end of the video, Shroud then drops a bombshell, and says that he’s “ready to quit” and that he’ll happily “wait for The Expedition Window to reset my account.”
We know that cheating has been somewhat of a problem in Arc Raiders for a little bit, and it got so bad at one point that the game had to temporarily remove the Hidden Bunker event as cheaters were abusing an exploit that let them enter before the doors had been opened. Embark has been employing rather deadly methods to stamp out these exploits when they’re found, but it’s clearly not been enough.
Even if not everyone that Shroud accuses of cheating is actually cheating, he’s still bumping into a lot of people that are, which seems to be gradually turning a few fans against the game entirely. You can see some disgruntled and concerned fans in the comments of Shroud’s video, with a user called AdvancedMonkey7702 saying that “nothing will kill this game faster than cheaters running wild.”
Others have criticized Embark for not permanently banning players who have already been picked up by Valve’s anti-cheat system (also known as vac banned), while there are plenty of calls to place cheaters in their own lobbies to completely remove them from the game’s main player base. That’s not a bad idea in truth.
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If cheating becomes worse and worse over time, and Embark does almost nothing to stop it, I can see the game’s popularity that it’s currently enjoying slowly draining, especially if big streamers like Shroud just pack up and leave. Hopefully, Embark is actually going to do something in the near future, and punish the players that need punishing.
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I like the idea of forcing cheaters into a separate server. Let them all cheat until their hearts are content, but only against other people also cheating. Fabulous. Should do the same thing with BJJ and MMA, have a steroids bracket and a clean bracket. LOL
2025-12-19 11:32:56
Ive spent a little time on this, because early on i felt like, cheaters cant ruing this game like they ruined everything else ive tried similar to this. I have never felt like I was in competition with other players so if they were advancing faster, i didnt (and really still do not) see how that *hurts* me. Almost all my deaths are to me making mistakes around ARC. a few deaths to pvp snipers in towers, yeah i was dead anyways.
So I am still trying to figure out how “better” (either skill or hax) players hurt my experience of running in terror from a Hornet.
We live in a world where any bf or cod game is cheater heaven, and ppl know it, and ppl buy it. in those games, it *does* hurt you to have cheaters.
I guess if i were farther along id be mad to open unlocked rooms and find them empty tho. As it is it took me a full day and playing at odd hours to get freaking apricots before other people scarfed them.
And of course I dont know why ARC Raiders seems so slow to do much about cheaters.
But at least with apricots, its easy to know someone who spawned closer legit got them first. Its not like bf or cod where I am seeing someone running at double max possible speed, right thru walls and mountains…
2025-12-22 20:50:42
