According to streamer LVNDMARK, Escape From Tarkov is “in a bad spot” because of “Cheating, scuffed hitboxes, biceps blocking bullets, audio and pitch black shadows,” and claims the developer is “asleep at the wheel”.
LVNDMARK has over 1.2 million subscribers on Twitch, and almost 170,000 followers on Twitter. His tweet criticising Escape From Tarkov and its developer has garnered thousands of likes and hundreds of retweets and replies.
People on Reddit have been complaining about cheaters, too. They seem to be a rampant issue within the Tarkov community. Other developers have even commented on the situation, explaining how it can be used to the game’s advantage if it manages to sort the problem out.
Content creator g0at released a video in February 2023 claiming to have discovered widespread cheating in the game. Escape From Tarkov developer Battlestate Games released a statement. “Every time for a long time, unfortunately, one way or another, a problem with cheaters pops up. And people immediately start blaming us for not caring”, wrote lead developer Nikita Buyanov.
They continued: “We have always been concerned about this problem and the work to catch cheaters is always going on.” Yet it still seems the community is unhappy and many agree with LVNDMARK that the developer isn’t doing enough to combat these issues.
Escape From Tarkov recently rolled back its 0.14.1.0 patch after a backlash. One player called it “astoundingly bad”. This update also added microtransactions where players could buy additional inventory space and access the game’s offline co-op mode. This does at least show the developer listens to the community.
In other news, Control‘s multiplayer spin-off game, Concord, will not be free-to-play. Instead, it will be a premium game, likely priced lower than the industry standard, with paid expansions and maybe microtransactions.