Escape from Tarkov bans and exposes over 6,000 cheaters by releasing usernames

Developer Battlestate Games banned over 6,000 Escape from Tarkov cheaters and shared their usernames on social media.

A hardcore tactical shooter, Escape from Tarkov hasn’t officially enjoyed a final release as it remains in beta at the time of writing.

It’s made quite a few waves in recent months, however, especially as players compare its offerings to Call of Duty’s DMZ mode.

Tarkov does have its own share of problems, though. Most notably, cheaters who employ aimbots, radar hacks, and wallhacks have disrupted the experience to a degree that’s forced developers to act. But simply banning hackers wasn’t enough for the crew at Battlestate Games.

Tarkov studio names and shames cheaters who’ve been banned

As “large ban waves” remove hackers from Escape to Tarkov, developer Battlestate Games has gone the extra mile to prevent bad behavior within the community. That extra mile consists of the studio posting the usernames of cheaters in public spreadsheets.

Thus far, the ban waves have cut out more than 6,700 cheaters. Speaking to TechCrunch, Battlestate representative Dmitri Ogorodnikov explained the following, “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.”

Battlestate opened up about this unorthodox practice in the following Twitter post late last month:

We have decided to resume the practice of sharing the information about large ban waves done with the support of BattleEye anticheat. Throughout the weekend over 4,000 cheaters were banned in Escape from Tarkov. https://t.co/c3hp3QGGPd

— Escape from Tarkov (@tarkov) February 27, 2023

Players and developers alike seemed mixed on the tactic of publicly naming banned Tarkov cheaters. Interestingly, one developer from another company who spoke with TechCrunch under the condition of anonymity said, “Good. I wish we [named cheaters] too.”

However, several fans who replied to the above tweet doubt this is enough to thwart those who exploit the game’s vunerablities.

One person wrote, “I don’t care about a google doc of cheaters’ names. I want better security, better manual ban systems, and 2fa.” Hopefully, work is being done to address all of these issues and more.