A new website is holding Arc Raiders players accountable when they betray their fellow players. Speranza Watchlist—named for the game’s social hub—bills itself as “your friendly Raider shaming board,” a place where people can report other people for what they see as anti-social behavior in the game.
In Arc Raiders, players land on a map full of NPC robots and around 20 other humans. The goal is to fill your inventory with loot and escape the map unharmed. The robots are deadly, but they’re easy to deal with once you know what you’re doing. The real challenge is navigating other players and that challenge is the reason Arc Raiders is a mega-hit. People are far more dangerous and unpredictable than any NPC.
Arc Raiders comes with a proximity chat system so it’s easy to communicate with anyone you might run into in the field. Some people are nice and will help their fellow raider take down large robots and split loot. But just as often, fellow players will shoot you in the head and take all your stuff.
In the days after the game launched, many people opened any encounter with another human by coming on the mic, saying they were friendly, and asking not to shoot. Things are more chaotic now. Everyone has been shot at and hurt people hurt people. But some hurts feel worse than others.
Speranza Watchlist is a place to collect reports of anti-social behavior in Arc Raiders. It’s creation of a web developer who goes by DougJudy online. 404 Media reached out to him and he agreed to talk provided we grant him anonymity. He said he intended the site as a joke and some people haven’t taken it well and have accused him of doxxing.
I asked DougJudy who hurt him so badly in Arc Raiders that he felt the need to catalog the sins of the community. “There wasn’t a specific incident, but I keep seeing a lot (A LOT) of clips of people complaining when other players play dirty’ (like camping extracts, betraying teammates, etc.)”
He thought this was stupid. For him, betrayal is the juice of Arc Raiders. “Sure, people can be ‘bad’ in the game, but the game intentionally includes that social layer,” he said. “It’s like complaining that your friend lied to you in a game of Werewolf. It just doesn’t make sense.”
That doesn’t mean the betrayals didn’t hurt. “I have to admit that sometimes I also felt the urge to vent somewhere when someone betrayed me, when I got killed by someone I thought was an ally,” DougJudy said. “At first, I would just say something like, ‘I’ll find you again, the only thing that doesn’t cross paths are mountains,’ and I’d note their username. But then I got the idea to make a sort of leaderboard of the least trustworthy players…and that eventually turned into this website.
As the weeks go on and more players join the Arc Raiders, its community is developing its own mores around acceptable behavior. PVP combat is a given but there are actions some Raiders engage in that, while technically allowed, feel like bad sportsmanship. Speranza Watchlist wants to list the bad sports.
Take extract camping. In order to end the map and “score” the loot a player has collected during the match, they have to leave the map via a number of static exits. Some players will place explosive traps on these exits and wait for another player to leave. When the traps go off, the camper pops up from their hiding spot and takes shots at their vulnerable fellow raider. When it works, it’s an easy kill and fresh loot from a person who was just trying to leave.
Betrayal is another sore spot in the community. Sometimes you meet a nice Raider out in the wasteland and team up to take down robots and loot an area only to have them shoot you in the back. There are a lot of videos of this online and many players complaining about it on Reddit.
Enter Speranza Watchlist. “You’ve been wronged,” an explanation on the site says. “When someone plays dirty topside—betraying trust, camping your path, or pulling a Rust-Belt rate move—you don’t have to let it slide.”
When someone starts up Arc Raiders for the first time, they have to create a unique “Embark ID” that’s tied to their account. When you interact with another player in the game, no matter how small the moment, you can see their Embark ID and easily copy it to your clipboard if you’re playing on PC.
Players can plug Embark IDs into Speranza Watchlist and see if the person has been reported for extract camping or betrayal before. They can also submit their own reports. DougJudy said that, as of this writing, around 200 players had submitted reports.
Right now, the site is down for maintenance. “I’m trying to rework the website to make the fun/ satire part more obvious,” DougJudy said. He also plans to add rate limits so one person can’t mass submit reports.
He doesn’t see the Speranza Watchlist as doxxing. No one's real identity is being listed. It’s just a collection of observed behaviors. It’s a social credit score for Arc Raiders. “I get why some people don’t like the idea, ‘reporting’ a player who didn’t ask for it isn’t really cool,” DougJudy said. “And yeah, some people could maybe use it to harass others. I’ll try my best to make sure the site doesn’t become like that, and that people understand it’s not serious at all. But if most people still don’t like it, then I’ll just drop the idea.”
