Locked doors sit at the center of Arc Raiders’ risk-and-reward loop. They gate off purple-tier weapons, rare attachments, and high-value gadgets behind keys and access rods you’re meant to earn over many raids. The “Arc Raiders door glitch” blows a hole straight through that design.
Players have found multiple ways to clip through locked doors and walls, reaching late-game loot long before they would normally see it. The trick has already survived several patches, spawned TikToks and YouTube tutorials, and become a flashpoint for arguments about cheating, bans, and match integrity.
Arc Raiders door glitch: what the exploit actually does
At its core, the Arc Raiders door glitch is a collision bug. By abusing how the game handles deployable objects and player physics, you can push a character through a locked door into the room behind it, without any keycard or access rod.
There are two main flavors:
| Glitch type | Requirements | How it bypasses doors | Typical targets |
|---|---|---|---|
| Two‑player push glitch | At least two players in a squad | One player physically shoves the other into the door frame until the game clips them through | Any keycard or rod door reachable by a squad |
| Solo barricade glitch | One player, a barricade kit or similar deployable | The player rides the deploying barricade or squeezes between it and the door, getting pushed through by physics | High-value doors on Damn Battlegrounds and Buried City town hall |
Both versions let you loot the locked room as if you had opened it legitimately. What they do not do consistently is satisfy any quest or contract that expects you to “use a key” or “unlock” that door, because the door never actually changes state.
How the two-player Arc Raiders door glitch works in practice
The two-player setup is the most straightforward, and it’s why random squadmates are showing up in public lobbies asking strangers to help them glitch doors.
Players coordinate like this:
- Form a duo or trio and move to a locked keycard or rod door.
- Have one player stand flush against the door frame.
- Another player repeatedly runs or jumps into them from a specific angle, trying to wedge their body into the collision seam.
- With the right positioning and timing, the game’s physics briefly overlap the character with the door and then snap them through to the other side.
Once the first player is inside, they can clear enemies, open chests, and scoop up loot without ever consuming a key. The rest of the squad either repeats the glitch from outside or waits to see what the first player brings back.
The social fallout is already visible: some squads refuse to participate, which has led to teammates griefing, revealing positions to enemy teams, or throwing matches when they don’t get cooperation.
Solo barricade door glitch (and what patches changed)
The solo method is more technical and has gone through several rounds of cat-and-mouse with recent updates. It revolves around the barricade kit and careful use of its deployment behavior.
Earlier, players could begin placing a barricade hologram right on a door, walk into it as it built, and let the deploying object shove them through the wall. After balance changes, you can no longer move while placing the barricade, and walking into the hologram during placement cancels the deployment entirely.
Even with those changes, the solo glitch still exists in a harder, more timing-sensitive form:
- Place a barricade hologram into the corner where the door frame meets the wall, as close to your body and the door as the game allows.
- Commit to the placement and stay still while the build bar fills.
- As the barricade actually pops into the world at the end of its build animation, walk or dodge into the tiny gap between the new barricade and the door.
- If your timing and angle are right, the collision spawns partially overlapping your character and pushes you through to the other side.
This technique is finicky. It tends to work only on the corners of door frames, not on flat center panels, and it may take several attempts. Players use it most often on Damn Battlegrounds’ control tower and other reinforced doors, as well as the town hall door in Buried City, because those rooms are stacked with high‑tier loot.
Why the Arc Raiders door glitch is such a big deal
Door exploits in a raid shooter are not just a funny physics bug; they touch progression, economy, and matchmaking.
| Impact area | What the glitch changes |
|---|---|
| Loot progression | Players can grab purple-tier weapons and rare attachments far earlier than intended, skipping key and quest chains. |
| Economy balance | Frequent exploiters inject more high-value gear into the ecosystem, skewing risk-reward and making regular play feel slow. |
| Match fairness | Squads abusing the glitch enter raids overgeared compared to others at the same account level. |
| Quest logic | Objectives that check for “unlocked with key” may not complete, because the door state never changes. |
| Community behavior | Arguments over exploiting versus “legit” play lead to griefing, reports, and fractured squads. |
Some players treat the door glitch as a clever trick in a PvE sandbox. Others see it as straight cheating that undermines the core fantasy of scraping by and gradually powering up. That divide is exactly why the exploit is drawing so much heat: it reshapes how fast people gear up and how fair encounters feel, without any formal rule change or new mechanic.
Is the Arc Raiders door glitch patched yet?
The short answer is: partially, not completely.
Recent updates changed two key behaviors:
- You can no longer move while actively placing a barricade.
- Walking into a barricade hologram while holding the placement button cancels the deployment.
Those changes shut down the earliest, easiest version of the solo barricade exploit. They did not fully remove the underlying collision issues. With adjusted timing and placement, players still report being able to clip into certain doors, especially where geometry leaves small seams in the corners.
There are also reports that some doors now block glitches from one side but remain vulnerable from the other, which makes the exploit more location-specific and less broadly reliable.
On top of technical changes, the studio has already signaled that repeated exploit use can lead to moderation: temporary bans, progress rollbacks, or other penalties. Community posts mention multi-month bans tied to door glitching, even if those stories are not paired with detailed official breakdowns.
Risks of using the Arc Raiders door glitch (beyond just getting caught)
It’s tempting to see the glitch as “free loot” with a small chance of punishment. In practice, the trade-offs are bigger than that.
| Risk | What players experience |
|---|---|
| Account penalties | Temporary bans and months-long suspensions tied to repeated locked-door glitching have been reported. |
| Progress rollback | Loot obtained through exploits is at risk if the studio decides to reset inventories or accounts involved. |
| Broken quests | Missions that require legitimately unlocking a specific door may fail to progress when you clip past instead. |
| Reputation damage | Teammates may report or avoid players who openly ask others to help exploit doors. |
| Gameplay erosion | Overgearing via exploits can flatten challenge and shorten the game’s natural progression curve. |
Why some players refuse to use the door glitch at all
Beyond the risk of losing access to the game, many players avoid the door glitch because it undermines what makes a raid shooter satisfying.
Arc Raiders builds tension around limited gear and uncertain outcomes. Keys and access rods are part of that tension: you spend time and resources to get them, then decide which locked door is worth opening on a given run. Skipping that decision loop with an exploit not only shortens the grind, it removes those small, meaningful choices that give each raid its personality.
For squads that care about long-term play, abusing the glitch can feel like flipping on god mode in a game you haven’t finished yet. The immediate dopamine hit is there; the sense of accomplishment isn’t.
What to expect next for the Arc Raiders door glitch
The direction of travel is clear: the studio is closing loopholes and tightening collision around doors and windows, patch by patch. That’s already made the solo barricade glitch far harder to pull off and has likely reduced the range of angles where door frames can be abused.
Expect more of that. Each time an exploit route gets popular enough to spread through TikTok and YouTube, it accelerates how quickly it draws attention from the developer and how aggressively the next patch targets it.
In the meantime, the practical choice for most players is simple:
- If you care about your account and long-term progression, treat locked-door glitches as off-limits, the same way you would an obvious wallhack in a PvP game.
- If you’re in public squads, be ready to say no when someone asks for help glitching a door—and understand that walking away from that raid might be better than playing it out with a teammate who now wants to sabotage the match.
Locked rooms are designed to be end-of-run moments: a payoff for surviving, exploring, and managing scarce resources. The Arc Raiders door glitch turns them into just another physics trick. Whether that’s clever or corrosive depends on how much you value the climb.
