Cheats are bad. By exploiting vulnerabilities in a particular game, either through datamine hacks or cheats for sale, charlatans can ruin the fun for everyone involved. Sometimes these scam artists have to be publicly shamed to understand the seriousness of the ban that has fallen on them, which is exactly what Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate Games has done with over 6,000 cheaters the studio has caught and banned recently.
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Escape from Tarkov is a tactical multiplayer FPS with some MMO and RPG features. It’s an interesting amalgamation of different games like Arma, The division, Hunting: showdownAnd PUBG, all wrapped in the fictional Russian capital of Norvinsk, Tarkov. It’s hardcore. So hardcore, in fact, that the game tasks you with counting your bullets and inspecting your magazines before embarking on shootings. Escape from Tarkov has been in some form of beta since late 2017 extremely popular on Twitch in 2020 partly because of how exciting it can be to survive a gritty gunfight. However, due to its punishing difficulty, it is also full of cheaters. Battlestate Games doesn’t treat cheaters too kindly, as evidenced by the series of Google Sheets the studio has begun tweeting, full of usernames of individuals the developer recently banned from its game.
More than 6,000 names have been dragged
The official has been since February 27 Escape from Tarkov Twitter account shared several Google spreadsheets with the handles of players caught using cheats to exploit the game. Using BattleEye, a patented antiheat software deployed in games such as Lot 2 And Rainbow Six SiegeBattlestate Games has caught and banned an estimated 6,700 players in recent weeks.
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“We have decided to resume the practice of sharing information about major bans done with the support of [BattlEye] anticheat,” Battlestate Games said on the game’s Twitter account. “During the weekend, more than 4,000 cheaters were banned Escape from Tarkov.”
On March 1, another 700 bans were reported And another 2,000 embarrassed on March 5. And these lists are publicly available. No password, just a pity..
The developers just want honest players
In a short statement to TechCrunchBattlestate Games spokesman Dmitri Ogorodnikov said the move, which involved publicly dragging the names of thousands of cheaters, was intended to inform Escape from Tarkov players that “justice has been done.”
“We want honest players to see cheaters’ nicknames to know that justice has been served and that the cheater who killed them in a robbery has been punished and banished,” Ogorodnikov said. TechCrunch.
I’m kind of reminded of that Game of Thrones episode, “Mother’s Mercy‘, in which Cersei Lannister endured the walk of reconciliation, a public ritual of punishment and penance that required sinners to walk a long distance in front of everyone completely naked, while onlookers shouted “Shame!” scanned. This Escape from Tarkov forbidden lists give the same energy.
Kotaku contacted Battlestate and BattlEye for comment.
Read more: Escape from Tarkov Developers say adding playable women would be a “huge amount of work.”
Perhaps this act of public disgrace is a good deterrent that makes hackers think twice before using cheats. At the very least, these banned lists will serve as a reminder that cheaters never, ever thrive.