ARC Raiders Dupe Glitch Guide | How To Get 18 Max-Rarity Bobcats

The latest round of community outrage arrived, as it usually does, in screenshot form. A player posted evidence of a raider carrying 18 max-rarity Bobcats, all fitted with identical attachments, all sitting at identical durability values. This is not a loadout that occurs naturally. This is not someone who got lucky with drops. This is the ARC Raiders dupe glitch doing what it has been doing, with great enthusiasm, since shortly after launch: making a mockery of the loot system that the rest of the player base is grinding through legitimately.

What makes the current situation particularly interesting is that this is not the first time. It is not even the second time. Embark Studios has been playing whack-a-mole with item duplication exploits for months, each patch closing one method and, apparently, opening space for another one to grow. The ARC Raiders duplication exploit has become less of a bug and more of a recurring character in the game's ongoing narrative.

"Players who have duplicated excessive amounts of items will be subject to further review and possible penalties. Nothing beats earning your loot the hard way."

CM Rocketeer confirmed via official channels that the team had already flagged the latest reports and the issue was under active investigation. This is the correct response and, also, exactly the same response the community received the last time. And the time before that.

A Brief, Depressing History of ARC Raiders Duplication Exploits

To understand why the community's patience on this topic is somewhat thin, it helps to know that the ARC Raiders item duplication history is not a short document. The game launched in solid shape, had a relatively smooth run through late 2025, and then began springing leaks faster than the development team could address them.

The most infamous chapter involved the throwable dupe exploit, which allowed players to infinitely duplicate any stackable item their character could hold in their hands. Grenades, ziplines, bandages, mines, and, most memorably, the Familiar Duck, a rare rubber duck cosmetic worth 7,000 coins per unit. Players began finding dead raiders in Buried City Metro surrounded by literal mountains of rubber ducks. One player reported extracting with 2.8 million coins from a single encounter with a dupe-killed raider without fully understanding what had happened. This is the kind of chaos that makes patch notes feel inadequate.

The exploit gained its widest audience when streamer TheBurntPeanut, with a combined audience of over three million across Twitch and YouTube, demonstrated the glitch live. Views exceeded 138,000 on YouTube alone for that single stream. Within hours, the exploit had gone from a niche discovery to a community-wide tutorial. Embark rushed a hotfix the same day.

Notable Detail

Embark's anti-cheat system has, at various points, responded to confirmed dupers by causing their raiders to spontaneously catch fire mid-raid and drop their entire inventory. Players reported finding dead, fire-killed raiders surrounded by stacks of suspicious loot in Buried City Metro. The studio never officially confirmed this was intentional. The silence was confirmation enough.

Following the throwable dupe came an infinite ammo exploit introduced inadvertently by the same patch that was supposed to address duplication. Using a weapon-swapping trick, players could load guns like the Anvil and Venator with 102 rounds — guns designed to hold six and twenty-two bullets respectively. The Bobcat, already a strong weapon, could be loaded with 102 rounds of its rapid-fire ammunition. In PvP lobbies, this was not subtle. A second hotfix followed within forty-eight hours.

Embark Studios' handling of the duplication exploit situation has attracted criticism from two directions simultaneously, which is an achievement of sorts. Players who abused the glitch believe the penalties are disproportionate given that the exploit existed because of a developer design flaw. Players who did not abuse it believe the penalties are too lenient. Embark, for its part, has acknowledged both positions exist and has not fully satisfied either.

The official statement on conclusion of the February investigation read: "Though these exploits stemmed from a design flaw on our part, the way they were used had a real impact on the game's economy and the way the community experienced ARC Raiders. It's on us to address that and work to restore balance." This is a reasonable position stated in reasonable language. Whether it translates into consequences proportional to the disruption caused is what the community has been debating ever since.

The streamer who popularized the exploit to over 138,000 viewers received a warning. The community noticed. "Embark is dropping the ball like crazy," one player wrote on the subreddit, adding that the dupe glitch had been "used by 90% of the serious player base." Whether that figure is accurate is less important than the fact that it reflects how normalized the exploit had become before a fix arrived.

Low Severity

Written warning issued. Limited abuse confirmed. Account flagged for monitoring on future exploits.

Mid Severity

Temporary suspension. Duplicated items subject to removal. Economy impact assessed per account.

High Severity

Account bans. Inventory rollback on duplicated items and any currency generated from selling them. Possible Trials leaderboard removal.

What remains vague is the definition of severity. Eighteen max Bobcats presumably qualifies as high. One accidental duck duplication presumably does not. Everything in between is where Embark's enforcement has been inconsistent enough to keep the debate alive.

What Duplication Actually Does to an Extraction Economy

ARC Raiders runs on a loot-driven economy where the scarcity of high-tier items gives them value, both functionally and socially. The ARC Raiders economy impact dupe undermines this in two directions at once. Players who exploit duplication gain access to legendary gear without engaging with the content designed to produce it. Players who do not exploit it encounter those players in lobbies equipped far beyond their supposed progression level. The net effect is that high-tier lobbies become stratified by who found the exploit early, which is not a metric most players consider fair.

The Flashpoint update's new weapons — the Canto SMG and the Dolabra energy shotgun — are already showing up in duplication reports. Both weapons are freshly added and both sit at the top of the current weapon tier. The Dolabra in particular requires significant investment to obtain legitimately: multiple Close Scrutiny runs, Vaporizer kills for Regulator components, and successful extractions with fragile blueprints. The idea that someone could bypass all of that within twenty-four hours of the patch landing is not sitting well with the players who started grinding immediately.

Scrappy Side Note

Separately, the new Scrappy feeding mechanic introduced in Flashpoint is generating legitimate legendary loot drops via apricots fed to the workshop rooster — without any exploiting required. Some players are describing this as effectively legal duplication of high-tier components. Embark has not commented on whether this is functioning as intended. Whether it gets quietly adjusted is a question worth watching.

Aggression-based matchmaking appears to reset with each major patch, which compounds the problem. Following a dupe-heavy period, freshly recalibrated lobbies mix legitimate players with exploiters who accumulated legendary stacks during the exploit window. The ARC Raiders matchmaking reset means there is no natural separation of the two populations for several sessions. Care Bear lobbies return for honest players and for cheaters in equal measure.

Where Things Stand After Flashpoint

As of Patch 1.22.0, new reports of the Bobcat duplication exploit ARC Raiders are circulating. CM Rocketeer has confirmed the team is aware and investigating. This language is identical to every previous statement on every previous dupe incident, which is either reassuring evidence of consistent process or evidence that the process needs updating, depending on your prior experience with the outcome.

What is different this time is that the community has more data on how Embark handles the aftermath. The February precedent established that hotfixes arrive quickly, investigation takes approximately a week, and penalties exist but are applied on a case-by-case basis that leaves room for debate. Players who abused the glitch in February and received light penalties have no strong reason to behave differently now. Whether Embark escalates the penalty structure in response to the pattern repeating is the central open question.

Embark's stated position — that the exploits stem from design flaws on their end — is honest and unusual for a game studio. Most developers in this situation place the blame exclusively on player behavior. The acknowledgment that the design created the opening does not change the fact that players chose to walk through it repeatedly. Both things are true simultaneously and neither resolves the situation for the players grinding through the game without touching the exploit.

Practical Advice

If you are playing legitimately: report suspected dupers through the official bug report channel on Discord, not through Reddit posts. Embark has confirmed they act on reports. Reddit posts generate community discussion but do not feed the investigation database directly.