Battlestate Games’ Escape from Tarkov remains in early access, wildly popular, and plagued with the same old community complaints it’s had since its initial release in 2017. A persistent strain of the latter has always been cheaters, which are the bad enough in a fire. and forget about a shooter like Warzone, but incredibly frustrating to find in an experience where accrued loot and gear is a core part of the game.
Every once in a while, Battlestate will go public with a banwave, but it’s never long before the complaints start popping up again. These reached a fever pitch recently after the recent removal, with a general feeling that the problem was worse than ever. Now Battlestate COO Nikita Buyanov has addressed the community in a way that could be described as forceful.
In a post titled “Hackers, Cheats, and Other Related Scum of the Earth,” Buyanov continues in that vein, though as we’ll see, not everyone is impressed. “Every time, for a long time, unfortunately, one way or another, a problem with cheaters arises,” Buyanov writes, “and people immediately begin to blame us for not caring. They begin to bury the game.”
Buyanov says that the studio is “sensitive” to such criticism, which is quite amusing in the context of Tarkov being one of the bleakest and most brutal games out there, and says that instead of writing an essay, he’ll be making the following points: :
- We have always been concerned about this issue and work to catch cheaters is always ongoing. They usually come in waves.
- Right now we ban several thousand cheaters a day and usually most of them get blocked after playing around for a bit.
- Battleye anti-cheat continues to improve, as well as the cheats. It’s a never-ending race to see who can get past each other’s defenses the fastest. In the last week alone, Battleye has been updated 4 times.
- We continue to improve our own additional cheat detection tools. We will have an update soon and start working on new hacker detection methods to automate it and improve the overall quality and speed of cheater detection and banning.
- The reporting system is also being improved by adding a notification if the reporter has received a ban. Keep reporting suspicious players!
“Your concerns and outrages are 100% clear to us,” Buyanov writes. “And always has been. Report all these bastards, we’ll make the game fairer together.”
The profanity and tone of defiance may well get the blood pumping, but it wasn’t long before members of the Tarkov community began pointing out that, er, we’ve been here before. Buyanov’s response was more flowery than usual but, in terms of the substantive points made, these are rephrased versions of what Battlestate Games has been saying for four years. (opens in a new tab).
Hackers, Cheats, and Other Related Scum from the Land of r/EscapefromTarkov
“Here are some thoughts from a player who has 6k+ hours and 3+ years on this game.” writeHllHvnd (opens in a new tab) in the most voted and awarded answer to Buyanov. “There is a pattern with these types of posts.”
The player goes on to detail his own experiences with the reports, casting doubt on the estimate that “several thousand cheaters a day” are being banned. “I see the same players in many of my raids,” HllHvnd writes, “I see the same cheaters occasionally in raids after days. 30 seconds of google research can show cheaters have been cheating undetected for 4- 5 deletes, and potentially even longer with private tricks.”
The post goes on to detail some of the most requested security features for Tarkov that Battlestate has yet to implement. Two-factor authentication, a post-raid replay functionality, a manual system to verify the actions of potential cheaters. “Actions speak louder than words BSG”, concludes HllHvnd. “Do your part, the ball is in your court now.”
Battlestate’s anti-cheat detection software, Battleye, receives particular criticism, with many having little faith in its effectiveness despite the developer’s claims. “Fact of Fun,” Animalm4st3r claims (opens in a new tab)“You cannot play Valorant while you have Tarkov cheats on your PC. The Valorant anticheat detects them if they are not running and refuses to start the game thinking they are for Valorant.”
Ever since I’ve been playing Tarkov, cheaters have been a constant theme. That’s not unusual in and of itself, because all competitive games have cheating issues, but it’s remarkable how formulaic Battlestate’s responses are to any new controversy. It’s more or less the same guarantees, the same promise that the studio takes it seriously, the same request to report cheaters. It’s a repeating pattern that has left some of Tarkov’s biggest fans very unconvinced, even if calling cheaters “bastards” this time around spiced it up a bit.