If you’ve noticed more Escape From Tarkov cheaters than normal, you’re far from alone. The “hardcore story-driven MMO” from Battlestate Games might be one of the most influential survival games in recent years, inspiring modes such as Warzone 2 DMZ, an addition to the latest Call of Duty game. However, the community is awash with complaints in recent months, with comments calling the current wipe “the worst so far for blatant cheaters.”
Dying to suspicious opponents in multiplayer games is something we’ve likely all run into over the years, and Escape From Tarkov is certainly no exception – though the more permanent investment in your loadouts and the potential to lose hours worth of investment in these more hardcore-focused shooter experiences makes it all the more galling.
Over at the Escape From Tarkov Reddit, the moderators have created a pinned post for players to talk about the “rampant cheating problem” in an attempt to curb too many separate posts being made. In fact, they’re actually on their second such pinned post, because the first grew too large after over a week of discussions and comments.
Among the responses, one player comments, “I’ve only been playing for five wipes but this is by far the worst wipe so far for blatant cheaters. I’m doing all of the things to try to avoid them.” They describe an example of hiding quietly AFK in a bush for several minutes only to be killed instantly by a cheater’s aimbot as the hacker came over a hill afterwards, saying, “These people aren’t even hiding it and it’s happening multiple times per day.”
“What is happening to this game,” asks another user, “Cheating’s always been an issue in this game but this wipe has been horrible, what’s going on BSG?” Several responses remark that many cheaters seem to feel confident that nothing is being done to deal with them, regardless of how blatant their actions are. “It’s incredibly clear this wipe they decided they aren’t even going to pretend to care,” another commenter says.
Escape From Tarkov Twitch streamer and YouTuber ‘Axel TV’ recently shared a video discussing the prominence of cheaters in the current Escape From Tarkov wipe. He notes that a recent BSG ban wave hit not only cheaters, but also players who have been buying items from cheaters, but that “something needs to be changed in order for the number of cheaters to go down.”
“Every single day I was getting wrecked non-stop for the past week or so, and I just want to speak out loud,” Axel says. He points to a situation where a player landed a particularly standout shot on YouTuber ‘Rengawr,’ who was quick to send the clip to the devs, who in turn handed the player a sixty day ban.
The alleged cheater then posted a clip to Reddit showing the kill was completely clean, leading to his sixty day ban being overturned. Rengawr’s immediate assumption that this was a cheat, however, proves just how rampant the issue is within the community.
Axel closes out his video by saying that he understands the developers have taken a break over the new year, but says, “This s*** needs fixing.”
In response to the pinned Reddit thread, one commenter links back to a post discussing a presentation from Tarkov game director and Battlestate Games studio head Nikita Buyanov in May 2015. The video is in Russian, but the user translates one specific part (around the 39 minute mark) where Buyanov talks about how players often spend more on premium features when dealing with hackers, in an attempt to counter their discomfort.
Among the translated quotes, Buyanov says, “We improve [cheating countermeasures] regularly, implement more and more complex solutions, and we clearly see correlation with reduction in premium purchases.” It’s important to stress that this speech was a long time ago, several years before Tarkov first released in closed beta, and it’s possible that Buyanov’s views have evolved since then. Nevertheless, the sentiment is clearly something that still weighs on players’ minds as troublemakers run rampant across his studio’s game.
The new Streets of Tarkov map recently arrived to mixed reception, with plenty of promise but some initial teething issues as Battlestate Games says more updates are planned. Check out more of the best battle royale games on PC if you just can’t get enough of that single-life tension.