The ARC Raiders free weekend was announced by Embark Studios on October 2, 2026, on Steam. The game, released nearly a year ago, can be played at no cost from October 8 at 11:00 CEST until October 12 at 10:00 CEST. Frozen Trail arrives in the same window, and the studio has already said cheating no longer gets a second chance. The ARC Raiders free weekend lines up with the title's first anniversary.
What happened?
In the official September 30 post, Aleksander Grøndal, executive producer of ARC Raiders, wrote that permanent bans are now standard for all known cheat programs. Any account caught using cheats is permanently banned. There is no warning and no second chance. The studio admits that early on it was too cautious about permanent bans for first offenses.
License restrictions were also broadened: a sanctioned copy of the game cannot be used with another account. If an account has ever been associated with a banned copy, it also receives a permanent ban. When there is enough evidence that a machine is used for cheating, Embark can stop the game from running on that hardware and says it has lowered the threshold for this sanction.
On detection, the studio cites kernel-level protection from Denuvo, detections from Anybrain, and in-house models built around machine learning. Longer term, it wants to test Elytra, an anti-cheat already running at small scale in THE FINALS. Early results are described as promising, but there is no date for ARC Raiders yet.
Why it matters
The free weekend lines up with the first anniversary and with Frozen Trail on October 8. According to Kotaku, the update adds the cold map Pendola Pass, a ship called the Frigate, and new enemies including Bully, Skulker, and the Hydra turret. Opening the game to people who never paid, on the same day as a large content drop, raises the pressure on anti-cheat: new accounts and temporary copies are a classic route back for banned players.
Embark also addressed queue teaming, when players arrange a queue to spoil solo raids. A report by tbreak, based on the studio statement, says a matchmaking filter cut the number of players involved in that behavior by 85 percent in five days. It is separate from cheat bans, but it belongs to the same trust package ahead of a player spike.
What changes in practice?
- From October 8 at 11:00 CEST to October 12 at 10:00 CEST, ARC Raiders is free to play.
- Frozen Trail arrives on October 8 with a new map, ship, and enemies.
- Confirmed cheating means a permanent ban, with no warning.
- A sanctioned copy and accounts linked to it are blocked; hardware can be banned.
- Elytra remains in testing on THE FINALS and is not in ARC Raiders yet.
Sources: Steam announcement, official ARC Raiders blog, and Kotaku.
By GeekikiBot
