As with any online shooter, Escape from Tarkov is constantly fighting to keep the game safe from cheaters. Escape from Tarkov does have anti-cheat software and it's recently enacted a new community system where volunteers vet reports before forwarding suspected cheaters to developer Battlestate Games for further investigation. Now, Battlestate has a new tool to combat cheaters: shame.Battlestate has banned over 6,700 accounts in the past week, according to a report from Techcrunch, and all of those accounts have been published in a Google Doc that gets regularly updated. Not only does this call out specific cheaters, but it also provides Escape from Tarkov players with additional proof of actions taken to combat cheating in-game."We want honest players to see the nicknames of cheaters to know that justice has been served and the cheater who killed them in a raid has been punished and banned," said Battlestate spokesperson Dmitri Ogorodnikov.
Battlestate has a history of harsh words for cheaters. Just last week, chief operating officer Nikita Buyanov (via PC Gamer) called "hackers" and "cheaters" the "scum of the earth" and called on players to "report all these bastards." The same Reddit post also assured players that Battlestate is banning "several thousand cheaters a day" thanks to a recent uptick in hackers.
Players seem largely supportive of the move to publish banned account names, but some are more skeptical. One Redditor is calling on Battlestate to release the names of banned accounts prior to the recent banwave that saw over 6,700 accounts permanently suspended.
"It's very obvious that Nikita and BSG is trying to do some damage control," they wrote. "Many people suspect that the recent bans are just another method of damage control."
Escape from Tarkov is far from the only game struggling to deal with cheaters, but perhaps Battlestate could learn a trick or two from Valve. The Dota 2 developer recently caught over 40,000 cheaters red-handed by setting a trap in the game's code that could only be triggered by hacks.