Arma Reforger Admins and BattlEye RCON: Setup and Commands

Reforger has two separate administration paths that people frequently conflate: in-game admin, which is a player logging in to a privileged session, and RCON, which is an external connection to the server console. You will likely want both, and they are configured independently.

In-game admin#

Two fields in the game block, and they do different things.

{
    "game": {
        "passwordAdmin": "changethisvalue",
        "admins": [
            "your-identity-id-here"
        ]
    }
}

passwordAdmin is the password a connected player uses to elevate themselves. In chat, #login <password>. Anyone who knows it can become admin. It does not support spaces.

admins is a list of IdentityIDs and/or Steam IDs, capped at 20 entries. Listed players still run #login, but do not need the admin password — the server recognises them. Those listed by IdentityID also get priority queue access when joining.

That distinction matters: admins is not "admin automatically on join", it is "admin without sharing a secret". It is still the better mechanism for regular staff, because a password shared with six people is a password you have to rotate when one of them leaves.

Once elevated, admin actions are issued from the in-game chat as # commands.

BattlEye RCON#

RCON is a network connection to the server console, used by admin tools, moderation bots, and anyone who needs to act without being in the game. Reforger uses BattlEye RCon.

{
    "rcon": {
        "address": "",
        "port": 19999,
        "password": "changethisvalue",
        "permission": "admin",
        "maxClients": 16
    }
}

Two things about this block cause most of the failures:

1. No password means no RCON. It is not enabled-by-default with a blank password; it is off.
2. The default permission is read-only. monitor lets a client read state but refuses commands. If your tool connects successfully and then every command fails, this is why.

Set permission to monitor for monitoring bots and stats collectors — least privilege is the right default for anything that only needs to read. Use admin only for tools that genuinely need to act.

19999/UDP has to be reachable. See Arma Reforger server ports — note that a blocked RCON port has no effect on gameplay at all, so this failure is invisible until you try to connect.

The commands#

Commands are typed into the in-game chat, prefixed with #. The commonly used set:

#players is the one you will use most, because kicks and bans key on the playerId it reports rather than on a display name.

If a command is not recognised, check the current version's documentation before assuming a permission problem — and note that many communities extend admin tooling with Workshop mods rather than relying on the base set.

Anti-cheat#

BattlEye anti-cheat is separate from BattlEye RCon despite the shared name:

{
    "game": {
        "gameProperties": {
            "battlEye": true
        }
    }
}

Leave it enabled on any public server. Disabling it is a decision for a private, trusted, testing environment only.

Verify it worked#

1. Validate config.json in the config validator, then restart.
2. Join and run #login <password> in chat. Confirm the elevation succeeded rather than assuming.
3. Confirm anyone in the admins list can run #login with no password — if they cannot, the identity format is wrong and the list is doing nothing.
4. Connect an RCON client on 19999/UDP.
5. Run #players. Output means the connection and read permission work.
6. If you set permission to admin, run a state-changing command and confirm it is accepted. A working #players proves nothing about write access.

Trusted references#

• Arma Reforger: Server Config — the admin and RCON fields
• Arma Reforger: Server Management — Bohemia Interactive's admin command reference
• Arma Reforger: Server Hosting
• BattlEye documentation