Most content about bans stops at the ban. The screen appears, the video ends, and nobody tells you what the next hour actually looks like. We got banned mid-raid in Arc Raiders while filming, and were back in a live match a few minutes later. This is what that process involves, what it costs, and the part people get wrong.
What the ban itself looks like
There is no warning and no ceremony. One moment you are looting and moving between compounds, the next the session ends and you are out. No explanation of what triggered it, no breakdown of which round did it. That is worth knowing in advance, because the absence of information is what sends people into guessing about whether the cheat was detected or someone reported them, and those two things need completely different responses.
First: work out which kind of ban you got
Before you spend a penny replacing anything, answer one question, because it decides everything else.
- Was the cheat detected? If a detection wave went out, everyone running that build got hit at roughly the same time regardless of how they played. Check the live status board. If the cheat you were running has moved off undetected, that is your answer, and replacing the account without waiting for an updated build just feeds it a second account.
- Were you reported? If the status is still clean and nobody else got hit, the problem was your gameplay. A new account fixes nothing here unless you also change how you play, which is the harder half.
People skip this step constantly, buy a fresh account, run the same config, and lose that one too.
Does the ban reach your hardware?
The second question is whether the ban is attached to the account or the machine. An account ban is inconvenient. A hardware ban means the game recognises your PC before you have even logged in, and a new account will not launch.
If it reached your hardware, a spoofer is what gets you back in. We walked through the whole process step by step in how to fix a HWID ban, and covered the mechanics in how HWID spoofers actually work. The short version is that a spoofer feeds the game randomised hardware serials so the fingerprint on the blacklist no longer matches yours.
Getting back in
Once you know what you are dealing with, the sequence is short: spoof if the hardware was flagged, get onto a clean account, and be honest with yourself about what got you banned before you queue again.
That middle step is where the cost sits. Levelling a new Arc Raiders account from nothing is hours of play before you are anywhere near where you were, which is why ready-to-go Arc Raiders accounts exist: hours already on them, available immediately. For a burner you are willing to lose, that is the cheap path back. For an account you actually intend to keep, it is worth pairing with a change in how you play rather than a straight replacement.
The maths people get wrong
Recovering from a ban is genuinely quick. That is exactly why it becomes expensive. When getting back in takes a few minutes, the temptation is to treat accounts as disposable and play more blatantly, which produces more bans, which produces more replacements. The players spending the most money in this hobby are almost always the ones who found recovery easy.
The cheaper path is boring and it works: an account with real history, a config that does not look like software, and the discipline covered in our four Arc Raiders strategies. If you are going to run features that get accounts killed, do it on a burner from the start and keep your main clean, which is the entire logic behind the burner approach in that guide.
What to run when you come back
If the ban came from behaviour rather than detection, the honest fix is fewer features. Frost LITE has no aim features at all, which removes the riskiest thing you can do in a game that analyses aim. Frost and Hydra carry the full toolkit if you would rather keep the option and leave it switched off. Everything is on the Arc Raiders page, and spoofers are on the HWID spoofers page.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to get back in after a ban?
Minutes, if the hardware side is handled and you have an account ready. The technical recovery is the easy part; deciding what to change is the part worth spending time on.
Will a new account get banned again straight away?
If nothing else changed, often yes. Work out whether it was a detection or a report first, because a fresh account only solves one of those.
Is it worth buying an account instead of levelling one?
For a burner, yes, it is the fastest way back. For an account you plan to keep, buying hours only helps if you also change the play that got the last one banned.
Prefer to watch: the ban happening live is on our YouTube channel.
