ARC Raiders’ Stella Montis Exploit Returned Fast — and the Real Problem Is a Safety Feature Being Weaponized

This Isn’t “Just Another Glitch” — It’s a Trust Problem in an Extraction Shooter

The fastest way to poison an extraction shooter isn’t bad balance. It’s uncertainty. The moment players believe deaths aren’t “fair,” the core loop collapses: why loot carefully, why take risks, why invest time, if the server can delete your run because someone found a way to become untouchable?

That’s what makes ARC Raiders’ latest Stella Montis exploit more damaging than a typical shooter glitch. It wasn’t discovered months later, buried in edge-case tech. It appeared almost immediately after a prior out-of-bounds method was patched—suggesting the underlying issue is less about a single zipline or a single wall, and more about how the map and its safety systems handle abnormal states.

And this time, the community isn’t even talking about some complex, multi-step setup. The reported method is brutal in its simplicity: wedge yourself between two pieces of geometry, trigger a “fix stuck player” prompt, and let the game teleport you—apparently through the ceiling—into a space where you can move unseen.

If that’s accurate, the headline isn’t “players found another gap.” The headline is: a player-protection feature has become a cheat tool.

Background: Stella Montis Became the Perfect Storm Map

Stella Montis isn’t just “the newest map.” It’s a magnet for pressure points:

It’s popular, meaning exploits discovered there spread fast.
It’s an extraction environment, so the consequence of dying is unusually punishing.
It’s built in a way that seems to reward close-quarters movement and creative routing—which is great until routing becomes escaping the map.

In many competitive shooters, out-of-bounds exploits are a nuisance. In extraction shooters, they’re existential threats. A normal cheater ruins a match. An out-of-bounds cheater undermines the basic promise of the mode: risk is voluntary, and outcomes are earned.

That’s why the first Stella Montis exploit caused such a strong reaction. The “invisible zipline” method wasn’t just a trick; it created an invisible predator problem: players being killed by someone they can’t reasonably see or counter.

The December 11 patch that removed that zipline and cleaned up other collision and material issues was the right kind of update—surgical and focused on competitive integrity. But the new exploit suggests the infection is deeper than the symptom.

The Technical/System-Level Issue: When “Failsafes” Become Vulnerabilities

The “fix stuck player” function exists for a good reason. Modern 3D games are full of dynamic movement: slides, vaults, mantles, physics nudges, server corrections. A single misalignment can trap a player between meshes or inside a prop. A stuck system is a quality-of-life promise: “If the game breaks you, we can unbreak you.”

The problem is that any system that teleports a player is, by definition, an attack surface.

Why this kind of exploit is hard to stamp out permanently

If the stuck fix works by checking something like:

“player hasn’t moved for X seconds,” or
“player is intersecting geometry,” or
“player is in an invalid location,”

…then it needs a safe destination to send the player. And if the safe destination is computed poorly—say, by moving the player upward until they’re no longer colliding—you can get the nightmare scenario: upward is “safe,” but upward is also “outside the map.”

This is a common failure mode in games that rely on vertical clearance rather than authored “unstuck nodes.” The game tries to be helpful, but it doesn’t know what’s playable space and what’s backstage.

Two likely root causes (without pretending certainty)

1) The teleport destination isn’t constrained to a nav-safe volume
If the system moves you to “the nearest non-colliding point,” that point might be outside the gameplay shell.

2) Stella Montis has stacked geometry that confuses collision resolution
Wedge points between large machines, and you can force collision states that aren’t tested in normal traversal. The system might choose a resolution vector that pushes you through ceilings, not away from props.

The result is ugly: a quality-of-life button becomes a one-click cheat.

Why This Hits Harder Right Now: Holiday cadence and update timing

Live-service games live or die on response time. Not because every bug must be fixed instantly, but because the community needs proof that the developers can contain damage.

ARC Raiders is in a sensitive window:

The team has already communicated a shift away from weekly updates.
The holiday period is close, when staffing is often thinner.
A major content update is scheduled soon.

Players don’t just fear the exploit. They fear the timeline: “If this took weeks last time, how long now?”

That fear becomes self-fulfilling. The longer an exploit exists:

the more clips spread
the more copycats try it “just to see”
the more legitimate players exit or avoid high-stakes runs

Extraction shooters can’t afford long exploit windows, because player loss feels personal. You didn’t just lose a match; you lost gear, time, and momentum.

Impact on Players: What This Does to the Meta and the Mood

Even if only a tiny percentage of players abuse the exploit, the psychological damage is broader.

1) Risk-taking collapses

Players stop bringing good gear into Stella Montis. They play safe, avoid hotspots, or stop queueing the map entirely.

2) Suspicion becomes default

Every death feels suspicious. A normal flank becomes “out-of-bounds.” A legitimate angle becomes “invisible cheater.” Once that mindset sets in, the community’s relationship with the game changes.

3) “Fix stuck” becomes taboo

Legit players who genuinely get stuck may hesitate to use the system—worried they’ll look like cheaters, or trigger an unintended teleport and get reported.

That’s the worst kind of collateral damage: a safety feature becomes socially radioactive.

Developer Strategy: Why “Patch the Hole” Isn’t Enough This Time

Removing an invisible zipline is a classic “remove the ladder out of the prison” fix. It works if the exploit was literally a ladder.

But if the new method uses systemic teleport logic, then this isn’t about one object. It’s about how the game defines valid space.

The stronger long-term responses usually include a combination of:

1) Constraining teleport destinations

The stuck fix should send players to pre-authored safe points or a validated navigation volume, not “up until it works.”

2) Adding detection for invalid positions

If a player ends up outside bounds, the server can:

auto-kill the character (harsh but effective in extraction)
auto-teleport back in with a penalty
block damage output while in invalid space

The key is to remove the incentive.

3) Fixing the wedge points

If the exploit begins by sliding between two machines, the geometry itself needs attention: collision smoothing, invisible blockers, or spacing adjustments.

4) Punishing abuse carefully

Players want bans. Developers want certainty. The realistic middle is:

patch first, then investigate repeat abusers using telemetry
avoid overbroad bans that hit legit “stuck” cases

The trust win comes from transparency and speed, not theatrics.

Future Outlook: Cold Snap Could Either Wash This Away or Amplify It

A major content update is a double-edged sword.

Best-case scenario

Cold Snap ships with:

fixes that close the stuck-teleport loophole
additional collision sweeps across key maps
guardrails that prevent out-of-bounds kills from invisible angles

Players feel the studio anticipated the next problem, not just reacted to the last one.

Worst-case scenario

Cold Snap brings more players back—more eyes, more experimentation—and the exploit survives into the new update window. That would turn a niche issue into a headline problem overnight.

For an extraction shooter, the margin for error is smaller than it looks. Players will forgive balance mistakes. They don’t forgive losing gear to someone who shouldn’t even exist in their world space.

Right now, the Stella Montis story isn’t about one map. It’s about whether ARC Raiders can protect the integrity of its loop during the most fragile part of a live-service year: the weeks when everyone wants to play, and the dev team wants to sleep.