The Rise of The Speranza Watchlist
Arc Raiders fans have been trying to solve a very old multiplayer problem: how do you deal with players who seem determined to ruin everyone else’s run? In a game where ambushes, betrayals, and tense extractions are part of the fun, some players have started looking for ways to identify so called evil raiders before they can strike.
At first, the community experimented with simple social tools. Some talked about acting like virtual sheriffs. Others started naming and shaming on Reddit, warning new players about ambushers or backstabbers. But recently a new tool began circulating through raider groups and Discord servers: The Speranza Watchlist.
On the surface, The Speranza Watchlist looks like a powerful database. You type in a player name and it spits out an evil rating, report counts, and a reputation grade that makes it look as if the Arc Raiders community finally has a hard system to track bad behavior.
Players have shared screenshots of wild stats. One account supposedly racked up more than 200 reports even though the player says they have not logged into that character for a week. Another raider found themselves labelled with an A tier evil rating and more than 400 reports, despite having never even encountered that many people in game.
Numbers like that should have been the first clue that something was off.
The Twist: It Is All Fake Data
Despite how convincing it looks at first glance, The Speranza Watchlist is not real in any official or technical sense. It is not connected to Arc Raiders servers, it does not read game data, and it does not track anything you actually do in raids.
If you visit the site directly, you are greeted with a very clear disclaimer before you can use it. The message states that none of the information on the site is actual player data and that everything is entirely fake. The creator describes it as a fan made satire tool meant only for roleplay and entertainment. No real player data is stored, tracked, or displayed and it is not an official tool from Embark Studios.
In short, the watchlist is basically a playful lore generator dressed up as a classified intel terminal. It is meant to help players roleplay, joke around, and build stories about their raider personas. The problem is that a lot of people encountered it through screenshots, Discord links, or word of mouth and never saw the disclaimer. To them it looked like a powerful community database that could actually be used to hunt down griefers.
Once that misunderstanding takes hold, things get messy fast. Instead of being a fun, fictional layer over the game, the watchlist starts being treated like a serious reputation system. Players begin taking its ratings personally and some are already talking about using it to decide who deserves to be shot on sight during raids.
Why A Fake Hit List Is A Real Problem
Many players are pushing back against the idea of a giant community hit list, even if the underlying data is fake. For them, it is not just about accuracy, but about what this kind of tool does to the experience of dropping into a tense, extraction style shooter.
Some in the Arc Raiders community argue that personal grudges are fine. If someone ambushed your squad at an evac point three runs in a row, it makes sense to remember their name and pay them back later. That kind of rivalry can even make the game more exciting and help build a personal story for your character.
But turning scattered grudges into a big public hit list feels very different. Critics point out several problems:
- New players who hear there is a massive community watchlist might assume the game is toxic and decide not to try it at all.
- Because the watchlist data is fake, innocent players can be branded as villains for no reason at all.
- Even if it did use real data, there is no clear way to define evil in a game where PvP is part of the design loop.
- Tools like this can encourage witch hunts instead of natural in game conflict.
Arc Raiders is built around tension, risk, and the constant possibility that another squad might betray you or camp your extraction point. Some players think that is part of the fun. Others hate it and would rather see clearer rules about what is considered acceptable behavior. A fake intel terminal that takes sides without any real information only adds more fuel to that argument.
There is also the basic issue of context. Arc Raiders is not a game with lasting, account wide moral consequences. There is no built in karma system, no official bounty board, and no in game reputation tracking for betrayal. Trying to bolt a community driven morality system on top of that quickly gets awkward. At best, it is a roleplay gimmick. At worst, it becomes a reason to harass people who never did anything wrong.
What Players Should Do Instead
For now, the best thing Arc Raiders fans can do is simple. If you see someone treating The Speranza Watchlist like a real source of information, let them know it is a satire tool filled with random data. It is fine to enjoy it as a bit of flavor or roleplay, but it should never be used as proof that someone is a griefer or deserves to be targeted.
Players who want a cleaner experience still have plenty of options. You can squad up only with friends, use in game tools to avoid people you do not like, or build your own private lists and share them within small groups. Those are all normal parts of online gaming culture and do not create a fake aura of authority for a made up database.
In the end, Arc Raiders lives or dies on whether its raids feel intense, fair, and worth coming back to. A fake watchlist cannot actually tell you who the bad guys are. Only your own in game encounters can do that. So treat The Speranza Watchlist as what it really is: a clever joke, not a justice system.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/third-person-shooter/the-speranza-watchlist-isnt-arc-raiders-answer-to-evil-players-its-just-a-roleplaying-tool-for-people-who-want-to-spice-up-their-games/
