ARC Raiders is dealing with its most disruptive exploit yet. A duplication glitch affecting throwable items — most notably trigger grenades — has spread rapidly across the player base, turning PvP encounters into nonstop explosive chaos and undermining the game's economy. The exploit works on both PC and console, affects every map and game mode, and has been amplified by high-profile streamers broadcasting it to audiences of over 100,000 viewers.
Quick answer: The trigger nade glitch is a duplication exploit that allows players to create an unlimited stack of any throwable item in a quick-use slot, enabling infinite grenade spam without ever running out. Developer Embark Studios has not yet released a hotfix, and no official next patch date addressing this specific issue is currently confirmed.
What the duplication exploit does
The core of the problem is an item duplication bug that targets stackable throwables. Players can generate an effectively infinite supply of any item that occupies a quick-use slot — trigger grenades, seeker grenades, trailblazers, snitch scanners, barricades, ziplines, familiar ducks, and even flares. Once duplicated, the items don't need to be moved into the slot manually; the player simply holds the throw button and fires off throwables as fast as the animation allows.
The result in practice is staggering. Players report opponents hurling 20 or more trigger grenades in under 10 seconds. Some matches have seen teams use upwards of 200 grenades in a single raid. Extraction points on maps like Stella Montis and Buried City have been completely walled off with duplicated barricades and ziplines, while the surrounding area gets carpet-bombed with explosives. Server performance degrades significantly under the strain of so many spawned objects, causing widespread lag.
Impact across PvP, PvE, and Trials
The exploit's reach extends well beyond PvP firefights. In PvE, players have used duplicated seeker grenades to solo queen-class enemies in under two minutes — encounters that normally require coordinated squad effort. Others have thrown duplicated grenades into groups of players cooperating on boss fights like the Matriarch, wiping entire lobbies moments before a kill.
Trials, ARC Raiders' competitive scoring mode, may be the hardest hit. By duplicating snitch scanners and seeker grenades, exploiters can continuously spawn and instantly destroy ARC enemies for the entire duration of a match, racking up scores above 200,000 — numbers that are essentially unreachable through legitimate play. With the final week of the current Trials season approaching and wasps reportedly on the rotation, legitimate competitors risk being locked out of top rankings like Hotshot and Cantina Legend entirely.
The economic fallout is equally severe. Familiar ducks, a sellable item worth roughly $105,000 per stack, can be duplicated in bulk. Players have been extracting from raids with millions of in-game credits in a single run. In trading communities, duped ducks are already being exchanged for high-value items like Tempest blueprints and modded Ven 4 weapons. Trigger grenades themselves can be recycled into processors and wires, which in turn craft Mk3 augments — giving exploiters a shortcut to endgame gear as well.
How the exploit spread
The underlying duplication bug appears to have existed in ARC Raiders for at least a couple of weeks, possibly since the Bird City update. Initially, its use was limited to a smaller group of players quietly duplicating ducks for profit. The explosive escalation on February 9th, 2026, happened when the exploit's application to combat throwables — particularly trigger grenades — became widely known through YouTube tutorials and, critically, through a live broadcast by popular streamer TheBurntPeanut.
TheBurntPeanut used the exploit on stream in front of an audience that peaked near 200,000 viewers. While some defenders argue he attempted to obscure the method by blacking out portions of his screen, clips from the stream clearly showed the duplication process during a night raid on Buried City. He was also seen spending roughly 20 minutes placing duplicated barricades throughout an extraction zone while playing alongside Tfue. The broadcast acted as an accelerant, and community moderators reported removing over 30 exploit-related posts within a single hour afterward.
Community response and ban expectations
Player sentiment is overwhelmingly negative, with many describing the game as "unplayable" until a fix arrives. Reports of exploit use in the majority of Stella Montis lobbies are common, and some players have stopped logging in entirely. The ARC Raiders subreddit created a dedicated exploit megathread to contain the flood of posts, with moderators enforcing a strict rule against sharing exploit instructions.
Whether Embark will issue bans remains a major point of contention. The studio's ban and enforcement policy explicitly lists "exploiting bugs or glitches for unfair advantage" as a bannable offense. However, the sheer scale of the exploit's adoption makes mass bans seem unlikely from a business perspective. Previous exploits in ARC Raiders — including door glitches and wall clipping — went largely unpunished, and players using actual cheating software like aimbots have reportedly received only 30-day suspensions rather than permanent bans.
The streamer question complicates things further. Banning TheBurntPeanut, who provides significant free exposure for the game, would set a precedent that many in the community support in principle but few expect Embark to follow through on. Some players have called for a middle-ground approach inspired by Valve's "Cheater's Lament" event from Team Fortress 2 — rewarding accounts that didn't exploit rather than punishing those that did.
Potential fixes and what to expect
Embark Studios has not issued a public statement specifically addressing the duplication exploit as of early February 10th. A patch was already expected around this time to coincide with a new in-game event, and players are hoping the hotfix will be bundled with that update. However, the exploit has reportedly survived at least two previous patch cycles without being addressed, so there's no guarantee.
Beyond patching the duplication method itself, the community is watching to see how Embark handles the economic damage. Options floated by players include a full server rollback, targeted currency removal for accounts with abnormally high balances, or vendor purchase limits. Each approach carries significant risk — a rollback would erase legitimate progress, while targeted action requires Embark to reliably distinguish exploiters from innocent players who may have unknowingly looted duped items from containers or corpses.
If you're playing ARC Raiders right now, exercise caution with any items that seem too abundant to be legitimate. Full stacks of purple familiar ducks found in the wild, containers stuffed with grenades, or teammates with seemingly bottomless throwable supplies are all red flags. Whether Embark ultimately tracks and penalizes players who profited from duped goods — even passively — remains an open question, but the risk exists under the current enforcement policy.
