A Reddit user who called his stunt the Naked Man social experiment went into Arc Raiders console raids with zero gear to test whether players value loot more than a surprise. He reports that out of 75 runs he was killed in 63 of them and that a follow-up run while holding a rubber duck produced friendlier results. The rules were simple and blunt. “No weapons, no shield, no augment, no heals. Just me and my trusty hammer,” the player writes in the Reddit post explaining the experiment. He says he used proximity voice chat to tell people upfront that he had nothing of value. “Yo, I’m worth 500 XP max. It’s not worth the trouble. I have nothing, not even a shield.”
The naked gambit did not pay off. The player reports “Out of 75 runs, I got KOS’d 63 times. Usually, I just caught an instant headshot the second I turned around to show my back lol,” which underlines how little mercy unarmed players receive in the heat of raids. The write-up is equal parts bleak and funny when the player adds “Congrats on killing a naked guy with a hammer, I guess?” Not satisfied, he tried the same test while holding a duck. His edit says he introduced himself as Duck-Man and then saw a stark change. “People were friendly 9 out of 10 Times. This is the Rise of Duck-Man!” The rubber duck seemed to act as a social signal that cut through the immediate impulse to shoot first and grab loot later.
This little experiment joins other community attempts to measure player behavior in Arc Raiders. For example, a weeklong Reddit test compared friendliness across platforms and found different social patterns in PC and console lobbies, which helps explain why a naked player might get such mixed reception depending on the lobby. The post is light on formal data beyond the raw kill count and the duck anecdote but it underlines a common multiplayer truth. Even when players are told there is nothing to gain, the reflex to secure a potential drop or remove an unknown variable is strong. The duck experiment shows how small, nonthreatening signals of harmlessness can sometimes override that reflex.
Readers who want to see the full original thread can open the Reddit post below.
I ran a social experiment called "The Naked Man"
byu/17prozent inArcRaiders
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ARC Raiders
Developed by Embark Studios
