Escape From Tarkov, though not the most mainstream of titles, has had a healthy and dedicated playerbase since its release, as it brought a fresh twist to the FPS genre with its extraction-based gameplay, however, as many PC games like it, it's long been plagued with cheaters, and the COO of the development team, Battlestate Games, recently took to Reddit to speak directly to the fans.

They explained that every time "a problem with cheaters pops up... fans immediately start blaming us for not caring." They attempt to argue that this is not the case, and they lay out several key points to explain what is currently being done to combat the cheating issue. Firstly, they state that "the work to catch cheaters is always going on" and that the cheaters "usually come in waves"

Battleye, their anti-cheating software "continues to improve," but the problem is that cheating technology is constantly improving as well, so it's a never-ending competition between the two sides, and the cheating side sometimes has the edge. The COO further states that Battleye had been updated four times "in the last week alone." They state that they continue to improve their own cheating detection and reporting tools.



Finally, they claim that Escape From Tarkov currently bans "several thousand cheaters a day and usually most of them are blocked after playing a little." The COO ends the post by stating, "Your worries and indignations are 100% clear to us. And always have been. Report all these bastards, we will make the game cleaner together."

To put it kindly, this message was not received well by fans on the subreddit. Primarily, many place heavy doubt on the "thousand cheaters a day" claim, as it clashes with other game's ban reports, games that likely have higher playercounts, such as Dota 2, which recently banned 40,000 players after a weeks-long "honeypot" trick. It's worth noting that Dota 2 is a free-to-play title, unlike Escape From Tarkov, which has an average concurrent daily playercount peak of approximately 600,000.

In general, fans believe that not enough is being done manually. Many claim that the game is poorly programmed on a fundamental level, as what you have in your inventory is sent to every client on the server, which makes it very easy for cheaters to access. Others claim that they've reported cheaters but have still found them in future lobbies much later. And some instances have simply been too blatant, like cheaters apparently being able to become invisible mid-game for over a month, with Battlestate being unable to fix the issue.

Posted: Mar 02, 2023 8:31 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/escape-from-tarkov-stance-against-cheaters/