Everyone knows about the current issues plaguing players tied to Embark Studios’ games, and that’s cheating. It’s much more of a common issue in the case of ARC Raiders, the post-apocalyptic extraction adventure title, but it’s still seen in THE FINALS, the team’s first-person arena shooter. That, along with stream sniping, exploits, and often-seen problems like duping, has long troubled these games, ARC Raiders especially.
During a recent talk at Gamescom Dev, Embark Studios’ Tom van Dijck, a software engineer focused on developing the company’s anti-cheat solutions, explained the difficulties of combatting the never-ending slew of cheaters breaching their games.
‘There Is No Silver Bullet That Will Fix It For You’
Tom van Dijck took to a Gamescom Dev stage on Monday to talk about Embark Studios’ anti-cheat ecosystem, and, for the most part, he was deeply transparent about the threat the team is facing.
We’re just a small team, and even if we weren’t, we’re up against an $8 billion industry. It’s operated like a commercial industry. How do you fight an industry that’s operated like a full business?
The cheating space is becoming increasingly manipulated and intelligent in response to the evolution of anti-cheat solutions. As van Dijck explained, there are hardware-based cheats, AI-driven solutions, and other elements at play, all of which represent a multi-headed hydra. When you cut off one head, another pops up to take its place.
We can’t keep up with the cat and mouse game, because we’d need thousands of developers to counter the cheats.
Today’s issues are exacerbated on a PR level because of the rampant wildfire rumors and claims spread throughout social media. It was explained by van Dijck that a vast portion of dealing with the community comes from managing the discourse that says ARC Raiders is infested with cheaters, a theme that pops up daily on platforms like Reddit.
In his words, you ‘can’t even fight this’ because any statement from Embark is met with ‘enormous backlash’ that often makes things worse. It doesn’t help that some of the world’s biggest streamers will go live on the game and be met with stream snipers and cheaters very obviously in their matches.
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Van Dijck explained that there are many blockers to developing a fully successful anti-cheat solution, and it all starts with the operating systems that things run on, such as Windows and Linux. They’re very accommodating for cheaters, and going so far as to develop a kernel-level anti-cheat solution never sits well with gamers because of its inherent instability and risk.
Kernel-level anti-cheat is obvoiusly an invasive thing, but it’s unfortunately a necessary evil right now. Even though Microsoft is working hard to secure the platform, most of this will never be back-ported to older versions.
To address that, Embark Studios has partnered with a company called Vaiiya to develop an in-house, kernel-level anti-cheat solution that solves many of these issues. Previously, Embark tried to rely on vendor-based solutions, like the Easy Anti-Cheat provided by Epic Games as part of the Unreal Engine, but it wasn’t any good.
As van Dijck advised the many developers in the room at Gamescom Dev:
If you’re making any kind of FPS and thinking about buying a product and integrating it, you’re not going to make it.
In a drastic bid to beat the cheaters, Embark Studios has instead pushed for a more data-driven ecosystem. The team captures up to 20 billion daily events between THE FINALS and ARC Raiders. These events are everything from mouse movement and clicks to instances of players working their way through a dupe exploit or dropping through a hole in the map.
They have a suite of tools and data presentation layers that allow them to track the movement of any player in any match, studying everything from recoil patterns and how they’re manipulating their crosshair to the buttons they press and how they interact with the scenery around them.
For anti-cheat, we have very specific events. The problem is obviously that a lot of this telemtry is for all of the players. It’s indiscriminatory.
We think that 90% of the players want to play in a normal way. Maybe less, maybe more. We don’t have the numbers… We’re not ready to share that…
Most of the data captured represents ‘noise’, as van Dijck put it, but there are fragments in there that can be studied to observe and act on suspicious behavior. He showed the room some examples, and then quipped that 15,000 people were banned on Monday alone, many while we sat in that room and discussed Embark’s anti-cheat solutions.
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Unfortunately, none of this represents a perfect science. Even simple, innocent programs like OBS, Steam, or Overwolf present a serious threat when it comes to identifying real cheaters, and it’s a case of these systems trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Ultimately, cheats are becoming so much more elegant and accessible, and van Dijck stressed that it’s the single biggest driver of the expansion of anti-cheat teams. You can go online and purchase a device for a few bucks that allows you to manipulate system memory and inputs, and AI-assisted cheats are producing aimbot solutions that work without ever being detected via traditional means.
Do you think Embark Studios can overcome the vast array of cheaters infesting its games? Let us know your thoughts on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that ARC Raiders Expeditions are canceled until next year, and don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
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