The first ban in ARC Raiders lasts 30 days, and it does not close the account for good: Embark Studios runs a three step ladder where the second block costs 60 days and the third one ends the profile permanently. The strike counter is tied to the account rather than to a specific raid or map, so a profile that comes back after a month walks in with one mark already on it. You cannot clear that mark, you can only avoid earning the next one.
That ladder has a twin that works nothing like it: the second enforcement line, the one covering dupes and RMT. There is also the question of why a fresh account on the same machine so often follows the old one out the door. Working builds with prices and current status sit on the ARC Raiders cheats page, and we rechecked EasyAntiCheat compatibility on Live Update 1.42.0, the one that moved Map Conditions to a regional schedule.
How the three strike ladder works in ARC Raiders
The scheme is almost embarrassingly simple: 30 days, 60 days, permanent. There are no intermediate steps inside the anti-cheat line, no warning and no trading restriction, the first confirmed block takes a month straight away. The step is set by its number in the sequence, not by how bad the offence was. An account with blatant rage aim and an account with careful legit aim both get the same 30 days on the first hit, and the only difference between them is how fast each one reaches the second step.
Two things get mixed up in discussions more than anything else. A ladder step is a duration, not a reason: it answers how long, not what for. The reason is set by the enforcement line, and Embark runs two of them. The first one, the anti-cheat line, deals with third-party software and anomalies in player behaviour, and only it has the 30 and 60 day steps. The second one handles the economy, dupes and trading for real money, and it is built very differently.
What the first 30 days actually mean
Thirty days is not a gentle warning with a clean slate afterwards. The account comes back with all progress, level, blueprints and stash contents intact, but also with a record in its history that never goes away. A second block on the same profile will be a sixty day one no matter how much time passed between episodes: the studio has never announced a period after which a strike expires. The practical takeaway for anyone currently googling whether they get another chance: there was one chance, and half of it is already spent.
Why the counter does not live in the account alone
Plenty of players create a new profile after a block, log in from the same machine, and catch a ban on an empty account a few raids later without doing anything suspicious. The reason is that EasyAntiCheat sits at kernel level and remembers hardware fingerprints. A new Steam account gets linked to the old one through the system configuration, and the punishment travels with it. Only a fingerprint change helps here: some builds such as ANCIENT ship with a spoofer inside, while standalone tools sit in our HWID spoofer section. Skip that step and the new profile starts not from zero but on the second rung of someone else's ladder.
The community argument: too soft or about right
A real fight is going on around the ladder, and it matters if you are trying to guess where the policy moves next. A visible share of players wants the steps gone and a permanent ban handed out on the first offence. Their argument is blunt: a month off is no punishment for someone who bought a monthly subscription to a cheat, he will come back and carry on. The studio's position shows through its detection stack, which leans on behavioural models and telemetry, including input analysis in partnership with Anybrain, and models like that get things wrong. There was a false ban wave that swept up people with unusual peripherals, pedals included. A permanent ban on the first hit would mean every model error costs someone an entire account. The ladder is a compromise between those two risks, and Embark has not moved it so far, although the scale of its sweeps is on record: the largest single wave took roughly 15,000 accounts in one day.
Dupes and RMT: the second line, where no ladder exists
Economic offences run on a separate track and have nothing to do with the anti-cheat at all. The gap between the two lines is wide, and it is worth knowing about before buying anything. When a player abused a dupe in moderation, cloning himself some Familiar Ducks or rare blueprints, the response is softer than any anti-cheat step: a warning plus confiscation, with the coins and items simply pulled from the account. Mass distribution of duped goods and trading for real money, on the other hand, draw a permanent ban immediately, with no 30 and no 60 days in between. On top of that, the buyer of duped loot answers exactly like the person who made it, so the "I only picked it up on eBay" line saves nobody.
The logic behind the split is fairly clear. A cheat spoils individual matches, while RMT breaks the economy of the whole game, and that is harder to repair than one ruined raid. So software gets a second chance and trading does not.
Appeals: a real person and a template reply
Embark says every appeal is read by a human and the process is not automated. That is believable, but set your expectations in advance: during the false ban wave people were getting a formal "ban upheld" with no discussion of details, while the "false ban investigating" thread in the official Discord ran to hundreds of messages and ended up spawning a Change.org petition. A human reviewer does not mean a conversation. A long emotional letter changes nothing, whereas a short one with specifics about your configuration and peripherals at least lands in the right pile. If the ban is justified, an appeal will not shorten it, it will only burn your time.
Where the entry into the ladder comes from: level 40 lobbies
Matchmaking tightened up after the Headwinds update: from level 40 you are only placed with fellow veterans, and the road back to newcomers is closed. For the ban question that changes a great deal. A newcomer on Dam Battlegrounds writes off a strange hit as luck, while a player with hundreds of raids behind him files a report at the first odd moment. The report itself blocks nobody, it pushes the account into a review queue where telemetry gets examined. But report density in veteran lobbies is several times higher, and that is exactly where the first step lands fastest. The same lobbies carry the Solo vs Squads toggle for solo players at 40+, and queueing alone against full squads makes every hit of yours stand out even more.
What to pick for ARC Raiders for this particular situation
The sensible starting point is where you currently stand on the ladder. A first strike changes the price of a mistake: the next episode costs twice as much in days, so aggressive settings stop paying off once you are back. Our catalogue holds 19 items for this game, the entry price is $4 per day, and different situations call for different things.
- Back after 30 days and want to stay quiet: ANCIENT, from $4 per day and $20 per week. It has a smooth slider, Draw FOV with an adjustable radius, Vischeck and Target Bones, so the aim can be dialled down to barely noticeable, plus a built-in spoofer and streamproof against OBS recording.
- No auto aim at all: ARCANE RADAR, from $4 for 3 days. An external radar and ESP overlay: it never touches your crosshair and never shoots, so it has nothing to add to your input. Fair warning: at the time of writing the listing sits in on_update status, so watch for the update.
- Get the software off the gaming PC: DMA setups. CLUTCH ARC DMA from $9.50 for 3 days and $35 per month, NF MASTER PACK DMA at $30 per week. You need a DMA card, firmware prepared for EAC and a second machine, but nothing runs on the main system.
- A separate account for testing: take a short plan, BLEAK from $4 per day or KRUSH from $5 per day, and change the hardware fingerprint before the very first launch. A test profile on an unspoofed machine drags the main one down with it.
- Ready-made aim with hitbox priority: FECURITY, from $5 per day. Aim at shoot, recoil compensation, Visible only, and a choice of head or body priority. Check the requirements before buying: Secure Boot and TPM disabled, disk strictly in GPT format.
One rule holds after a first strike: the more visible the effect on screen, the shorter the window you should keep it switched on for. In what we have seen, a monthly subscription with aggressive settings and the second rung of the ladder tend to meet before the paid period runs out.
You can compare positions by price, undetected status and feature set on the cheats for ARC Raiders → page, which gathers every option including private builds and DMA. The list gets rebuilt after game patches and anti-cheat updates, and the next rebuild point is the Frozen Trail map release on 8 October 2026, so the status on a product card is always fresher than any review.
If you are unsure what to take after a first strike, ask actual people: Telegram (200+ members) and Discord (637+ members). Our buyers post there about how builds behave after each update.
Frequently asked questions about bans and cheats for ARC Raiders
Is the first ARC Raiders ban permanent?
No. The first block runs for 30 days and the account returns with progress, level, blueprints and stash contents. The profile is closed for good only on the third episode: the second step is 60 days, the third is permanent. The step depends on the strike number rather than the severity of the offence, which is why a first ban looks the same for crude aim and careful aim alike.
Does a strike expire over time?
There is no publicly announced expiry period. Embark has never described a window after which a record in the account history stops counting, so plan for the worst: a second block will be a sixty day one even if a year passed between episodes. That is why the thing worth changing after you return is your settings, not your account.
Will a new account on the same computer get banned?
That is often exactly what happens. EasyAntiCheat runs at kernel level and links profiles through the hardware fingerprint, so a fresh account from the same machine leaves right behind the old one. The fingerprint is changed with a spoofer: some builds have one included, standalone tools are collected in our HWID spoofer section, and without it a clean start is not going to happen.
Do dupes get 30 days or a straight permanent ban?
It depends on volume. For moderate abuse the studio limits itself to a warning and confiscation: duped items and coins are stripped from the account. For mass distribution and trading for real money it hands out a permanent ban immediately, with the ladder not applied at all. Buying duped loot is punished the same way as duping it, so "I only bought it" is not an argument.
Is there any point in appealing a first ban?
There is a point if you are confident it was a false positive, say you run rare peripherals or an unusual controller. Appeals are read by a human according to the studio, but the replies come back templated and they do not shorten a justified block. While the review runs, the more useful move is picking a quieter kind of software: the comparison by features and status lives in the ARC Raiders cheat section.
