The developers of Escape From Tarkov, Battlestate Games, have started a new chapter in their fight against cheaters and hackers. You could say that they are applying medieval media digitally: they have banned 6700 cheaters of their game and have published their names, as if they were pikes driven into stakes that warn future cheaters.
Obviously, Battlestate Games hasn’t literally put heads on pikes, but the excel sheet they’ve shared (via PCGamer) is a good digital simile. The list is public. Legal players can keep an eye on it for their amusement and to see if that player who killed them in a strange way is there.
This post was accompanied by statements from a Battlestate spokesperson: “We want honest players to see cheater nicknames“and so they may”know that justice has been done“. The company intends to turn this practice into a habit and it will include any cheater, we imagine regardless of whether they are anonymous or a famous content creator.
Battlestate Games’ war on cheaters has gotten serious. A little over a week ago, Battlestate’s COO, Nikita Buyanovtook to Reddit to encourage fans to “denounce all these bastards“, referring to cheaters. For its part, the community continues to show skepticism because there is still a LOT of work ahead in this field.