Arc Raiders has “aggressively” been cracking down on cheaters and already banned “tens of thousands of players so far”.

That’s according to Embark Studios’ CEO Patrick Söderlund, who told IGN in a new interview that while he wasn’t “going to give a specific number” on how many players have been caught cheating, with “anywhere between 0.1 percent to one percent of any multiplayer crowd in a large-scale multiplayer game is cheating”, the team had to work hard to “be a step ahead”.

“We have been pretty aggressive on this,” Söderlund said. “The game wasn’t prone to so many cheaters in the beginning, but as with all multiplayer games that get successful, this becomes a component, unfortunately. For us as developers, just like a [Distributed Denial-of-Service] attack, it’s one of these things that you just have to try and be a step ahead. To be very honest with you, it’s not always easy because the minute you do something, the minute you come up with something, they’ve come up with something else to do.”

That’s not the only difficulty, either. Söderlund said that the banning process alone is “delicate” because “we need to make sure that we ban people that deserve to be banned”.

“If you take general figures, anywhere between 0.1% to 1% of any multiplayer crowd in a large-scale multiplayer game is cheating, and therefore, to some extent, should get a temporary or a longer, or permanent ban,” Söderlund explained.

“It could be a minor thing that you’re trying. An aim bot that may get you a 24-hour suspension, to doing something that, frankly, means you shouldn’t be playing the game anymore. So, we’ve put together a system. We’ve started banning players, and why do I know that? Because I see an influx of people trying to get to the studio, and to me. ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything’.

“We’re seeing a pretty substantial change in that, but I know that we have banned probably tens of thousands of players so far, that I know. Again, we need to make sure that we get it right. That we are fair, and that, in the case where it’s clear that we didn’t get it right, that we can quickly remedy the situation so that player isn’t affected in an unfair fashion or way.”

It’s this need to be fair that does, Söderlund admits, result in “a little bit more cautio[n] than what I think some people want for that specific reason”.

“Regardless of how cautious you are and what systems are in place, there are always people that are going to feel like they’re treated unfairly that, ‘I didn’t do anything,’ and then there are absolutely people that will get caught or that are unfairly banned that we need to deal with. We try and look at it from that perspective, but we will continue to go after people that are doing things in the game that they shouldn’t do.”

Arc Raiders committed to returning items to your inventory if you lose them to cheaters shortly after launch, saying it was “committed to skill and fun, not unfair advantages”. And you don’t even have to be the person to have reported them, either.

While finding and losing gear in extraction shooters is a key part of the experience, developer Embark Studios said it was working to ensure that players who lose out due to “unfair play” are compensated, regardless of whether or not they’re the one who reported the cheaters in the first place.

In Eurogamer’s Arc Raiders’ preview, we wrote: “Arc Raiders is, simply put, a third-person extraction shooter. It is a factory that mass produces tense moments, by its own nature a source of intense anxiety: high stakes, devastating losses, rapturous victories. Pulling back, it’s a game of gradual self-refinement, both of your inventory full of resources and your characters abilities, and likewise your own know-how.”