Escape from Tarkov: The eggs that made the Omelette,

A Backstory to Popularity.

Disclaimer

This was one of my first big pieces from an old website that I archived. Though it may have walls of text, it was my first attempt at journalism.
Due to migration issues, many parts of this document have gone missing and been repalced by placeholders

SCOPE

When it comes to small things exploding, I often feel we forget the eggs broken to make the omelette. With games like Escape from Tarkov, these were not small eggs. Recently, Tarkov has taken to the stratosphere with massive public figures sharing their two cents. Figures like DrDisrespect A.K.A “The Doc” who once swore off Tarkov all together

With influencers like The Doc and Shroud bringing Tarkov to the masses, there was bound to be a boom of new players. So many that Battlestate Games have been able to start beta testing their game, which is in beta. Granted it’s mainly server testing at the moment but its a start. This article is aiming to tell you the backstory of this punishing, hyper-realistic first-person shooter, and its darker past.

This article is in no way to tarnish any reputation built upon this game and is not a way to point the finger at people but is more to educate. With an influx of new players, many things will be glossed over or never spoken of: So let’s talk about these things.

PRESUMED KNOWLEDGE

Not to make assumptions, but in order not to confuse anyone in any way over this – very long – essay, here are some terms and names I will use so you understand what they are and what they mean.

• LABS – Terragroups Lab, The most financially lucrative and most difficult map pre Patch 0.12. At the time the only map to include Raiders.
• RAIDERS – A form of Scav but with better guns, ammo, armour and A.I programming. More challenging for players to beat.
• SCAV – Short for Scavenger, these are A.I combatants that are hostile to the player and hold very common loot and lacklustre weaponry.
• RUN – Essentially playing a specific map, Labs Run, Factory Run – Play Labs, Play Factory.
• SCAV BOSS – A high value scav in a map, think Raider but with Million Ruble (Russian Currency) items in their pockets.
• Vertical Slice – A very highly polished segment of a game used to sell the game and often used as marketing material. Think like a 1 level demo.
• PMC – A PMC is the player. In either 1 of 2 factions. Not any discernible difference apart from 1 speaking English and one speaking Russian.
• BSG – Battlestate Games (The Developers)

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Indulge me if you will? What if I told you, the team at Battlestate games, had made another game. Now imagine – This game is canon. Scavs and Raiders, meet Contract Wars’. Take some time to look, look at how very similar to Escape from Tarkov, that is. Believe me when I say – I am not mad. Now clearly some Copy & Paste going on here but remember, Indie. Though the Contract Wars were only mentioned in loading screens (and thus easily dismissed as lore and not an actual game) keeping things familiar for older fans is a nice touch.

Now I’m not saying this was BSG personally – perhaps members of the team (if not the whole team) but they were involved. I had never heard of this game until one very long, very boring load into the ‘Labs’ map, then once again with the new “GP” item introduced in patch 0.12. Until then this game had flown under my radar. I can’t say it looks like my cuppa, but it looks worth a shot at some point.

Lets put on the speculation spectacles kids because I couldn’t find much information on this but – in my very unprofessional opinion – here’s how it went down: Battlestate Games (Formerly Absolutsoft) worked in secret whilst working on Contract Wars, borrowing assets where needed to “rush” the development of the Pre-Alpha build of Tarkov. Soon after, they launched the Second (and now main) studio “Battlestate Games” and announced Escape from Tarkov. The game generated buzz around the Contract Wars players and that slowly bled out into the hardcore survival FPS circles, as it bled through they then hit what we will call – The Inciting Incident.

THE INCITING INCIDENT

The first time I ever heard of Escape From Tarkov was on a “SidAlpha” YouTube Video titled “Dirty Devs: Escape from Tarkov”. In this video, evidence was brought forward bringing light on the controversy that players could not get a refund for the game, regardless of the situation or problem they encountered. At the time the TOS read:

6.4.1 By pre-ordering the product, you are authorizing Battlestate Games Limited to automatically charge your account immediately upon submitting the pre-order, and you agree that you will be authorized to participate in beta testing of the product and to download the product and use the Service when it becomes available. The amount you pay will be held with Battlestate Games Limited as a Non-Refundable Deposit (NRD). The NRD amount is clearly shown on the product webpage, and it represents the full purchase price of the Product. Any NRD collected is non-transferable.

Escape from Tarkov Terms of Service

In doing some digging into this I can no longer find a reference to this on any official media or documentation on the games website. This may have been removed to try and sweep any controversy under the rug, or the developers are now offering refunds under specific circumstances. Either way, the fact that this is no longer mentioned in the TOS, EULA or Privacy Policy does draw cause for concern.

Though the game is called as a “Pre Order” with “Access to the Beta” which at the time was actually an “Alpha” build of the game – A refund is a basic consumer right. Compile upon this the -at the time- lack of interaction between Dev and Player made it very hard for people to consider buying this game. People would be banned from the forums for asking where they could get a refund.

COMPOUNDING INFORMATION

This was the point where I said “What type of dev won’t give a refund on a game even if it broke and simply does not work? Doubt I’ll be playing this game.” Hell’s getting pretty cold these days guys not gonna lie. Big man Matthew -who stands at 5 foot 8- dropped a whole One Hundred and Fifty GBP on this bad boy. But we’ll get to that later, right now we have a more pressing matter. This controversy pales in comparison to this next piece.

To say I am out of the loop on this one is an understatement, but call me Lois Lane because I went hard on this. I done my own work here. Whilst looking for the SidAlpha video I typed into YouTube “Escape from Tarkov Bad” – totally forgot the name of the creator and the video series. Turns out Battlestate Games were rather DMCA Happy on YouTube, towards two specific content Creators. Scavs and PMCs – Meet Eroktic

EROKTIC

When I sent my email to Eroktic I did not expect a response. Over the next 30 hours, we exchanged 4 emails. I initially told him I was writing a piece on the recent boom that Escape from Tarkov had recently seen. I explained this article to him stating: I initially knew of the No Refund policy and was looking for information on this when I came across your story. I wished to just do some fact-checking on the information I had gathered on what exactly had happened to him. From what I understood: Eroktic had owned the game for over a year and made content on it and used his platform to raise awareness of any bugs, glitches and exploits he encountered or found.

At the time, this was the best way to make something known to the devs as the forums were not the best place to share this information.
For lack of a better term – you were BETA TESTING this game? I asked
As someone with many years of beta testing behind them, this seems similar to my experiences: Play the game, find something off, test for repeatability then report your findings. This, in turn, allows the developers to know exactly how to replicate the bug or glitch and where to look when patching it out. In this particular case – Battlestate Games tried to patch out Eroktic.

Eroktic had shown a video in which a major potential leak in the game had compromised the login credentials of many accounts. He wished to make people aware of this and was urging people to turn on 2-Factor Authentication to improve account security. Battlestate Games claimed that in the video it was 3 accounts. After having viewed this video I can say that yes – whilst only 3 accounts were accessed, this is something that should have concerned the developers. Any potential breach should be looked into with the utmost importance. Any potential ramifications should be handled with privacy until such time public action should be taken, this is very serious business.

SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS

I applaud Eroktic for this: he took a potential data breach and made it known to the community. Whilst technically not beta testing he was still bringing to light a potentially unknown issue via his platform. I personally condemn Battlestate Games approach: they took 47 videos made by Eroktic on the game and abused the YouTube Copyright DMCA takedown feature to silence this man. Forty-Seven DMCA strikes! Three is enough for a permanent ban and Battlestate Games hit the man with 15 fold that amount. The worst part? They tried to justify it.

As usual, we monitor all the feedback and we take everything in consideration. In this case, to our regret, we had to act hard.

Battlestate Games on a Facebook Post

Using words like “Negative Hype” to try villainize Eroktic whilst trying to make out this was the only option they had. In my conversation with Eroktic he states:

I never talked with the devs and none ever talked with me or even warned me to [take down the video] trough someone else.

Eroktic in an Email to myself

Battlestate Games do say in their post that they did look into this leak and forced password resets on the accounts. The part everyone who isn’t in the “cult” (as Eroktic puts it) seems to overlook is how this action could have ruined this mans career. I think Eroktic puts it best himself when he says:

‘I’ve done many videos with suggestions to improve their product and I’ve done many videos where I am criticizing certain things because I wanted to help the game to becomes as better as possible. In other words, I was giving constructive criticism, but it was all in a good spirit to help them with my feedback. And since I am representing the game in the “negative hype” (devs are calling it like that), in 3 years developer never contacted me. It was actually quite opposite. Some of the veteran top Tarkov streamers are in a really good relationship with BSG and they do not even wanna mention my name on their stream. It is a literal cult and if you do not play within their rules, basically the whole community will turn against you. In other words, If you are not hyping the game up 100% and increasing sales, you will be nobody. If you are doing your best to sell the product, BSG, and their streamer puppets will like you and you will feel the growth as a content creator (and this is a free tip for you if you are a small streamer/Youtuber). I do not envy other streamers or hate them. It is their way of approach and I respect that. But you see, that is not the real problem.’

Needless to say, the response taking by the devs rippled throughout the community. One such figure known as “Klean” took to twitter to discuss this and make a bold statement, expressing his dissatisfaction with how things went down he said:

For Eroktic, the real problem is how the developers stated in their post that he was slandering their game and uploading content maliciously and with disregard for their reputation. The comments section of the post in question is littered with responses from fans on both sides and people in the know. Whilst Battlestate Games tries to save face in the post, claiming they were trying to keep their reputation clean, some comments are quick to point out the irony that in taking the stance they did – the developers did more harm than good. In 1 correspondence Eroktic states:

I was not even showing game braking bugs, glitches and exploits for views. That was not my point. I was talking about them on stream, was never abusing the game mechanics like item duplications and stuff like that and I was never showing them to my community. I was targeting a different spectrum where EVERYONE is affected by it. for example that FPS is linked to the RPM or visors not working properly and stuff like that.

After this Eroktic did not play Escape from Tarkov for over a year. He instead played games like SCUM and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2. He also states in this same correspondence that he did not feel any ill intent or anger towards any of the bigger content creators who had previously covered the game. He only felt disgusted at Battlestate Games for how poorly they handled the situation and their overall behaviour surrounding the incident in the days that followed. Eroktic finally started back Escape from Tarkov and as he puts it:

I haven’t played the game for 1 and a half years, because I was disguised by developers’ behavior and I couldn’t stand the game. One day I woke up and realized that I wanna play it again, so I started again a few months ago. Many people are speculating that I am back because of the views, but that is not true. Because if it is, I would keep playing Division 2, because it gave me many more subscribers.

Eroktic didn’t pick the game up again for views, recognition or even money – he just missed the game. He had sunk so many hours into the game and after one and a half years… he just wanted to play that particular game once more. The real shock must have come after so many patches: many broken things now fixed, many new things are now broken – does he play for fun or pick up where he left off? Well, in his own words:

I am a forgivable person and I do not take things too personally. I am playing the game, because there is nothing else to play right now.

This to me begs a bigger question: What keeps people playing Escape from Tarkov. For myself, it was YouTube saturation. Every second video on my recommended home page was somehow related to the game. At the time I was having an affair with my girlfriend and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege. Two very different games with similar but different demographics. One game is a looter shooter, hyper-realistic, first-person survival shooter with RPG elements… the other is Rainbow Six Siege. So how did we get here? How did we get to the point where any semi-popular streamer can get Twitch drops and people who swore off this game act like its the most addictive drug in the world? I guess we speculate some more.

SIDETRACK SPECULATION

I suppose it must have been the initial creeping in peoples video feed on YouTube. When the algorithm sees something getting popular worldwide -or regionally- it starts to just drop a single video into your recommended. Provided that the content of the creator and category of the video aligns with similar videos you already watch, you could find yourself watching a video like this. It happens with music all the time. In the purest and basic form: it’s an A.I. If you like Bullet for my Valentine and Cancer Bats then maybe you will like AxeWound, after all – AxeWound is a supergroup comprised of both bands lead singers.

If you watch a few YouTube creators, and some of them have played Tarkov, and then Tarkov starts to gain traction then maybe the algorithm recommends you one of those videos. After you click it, your engagement and view time is monitored, so it recommends more. Before you know it you’re hooked and you find yourself watching videos on the Patch Notes, you don’t play but you are up to date. You watch all the top streamers. You’re hooked. You just dropped 34.99€. You’re clueless as to what to do, all those hours and it finally clicks: It’s harder than it looks. Now you’re investing time in the game. Gotta get better, Pestily, DeadlySlob and Veritas (all high viewer content creators) make it looks so easy. This game is masochism but you spent that money. Welcome to the sunk cost fallacy.

DEVELOPER INTERACTION

Recently, the developers have started taking more of an interest in the community and some suggestions that they have. This first started with just some podcasts with some of the top tier content creators. These streams would discuss upcoming changes the community should expect and also a discussion of the most recent patch notes. This soon flourished into small ideas being dropped by people and the devs somewhat implementing these. Small nuggets of information would be dropped and changes would be recommended to the developers.

The developers would start giving more and more detailed information out via their Instagram and Twitter as well as on the podcast. Teasing the wire mesh of specific guns or addons, showing changes to specific keys, then going on to discuss them and the reasons why it was changed in upcoming podcasts. Even the official Twitch page for Battlestate Games became a place for major announcements. The hype for everything the devs were doing grew within the community and got more and more intense now that they were communicating much clearer than in the past. Even though the information was drip-fed to the community it was better than nothing

One of the biggest announcements came just before the much anticipated “Patch 0.12”. Battlestate Games had made a movie, in episodic series based off of the events leading to the game: RAID. RAID follows a group of BEAR PMCs who are deployed in the city of Tarkov. It could be 2 or more groups, I won’t lie: it has a story, but it’s all in subtitles and for something that is independently developed and shot, the action is so high and the effects are so good you could be forgiven for thinking it was commissioned and funded by a company like Netflix.

SIDE CONTENT

RAID is filled to the brim with things only found in the game, specific locations and even a recreation of one of the CG trailers for the game. We are currently on Episode 3 and eagerly awaiting Episode 4. The livestreams are similar to that of watching CCTV footage. For up to 3 hours you could sit and watch a person (Usually dressed to look like someone in the game) play Solitaire, just for the transmission to be interrupted by an episode of RAID starting. The bare minimum content in these streams leads to interesting speculation within the Twitch Chat. Why is “Killa” (one of the most brutal Scav bosses) interacting with trader and UN ambassador “Peacekeeper”. We don’t know yet but we’ll find out at some point.

Its clear the devs have tried their hardest to change their public image since the inciting incident, who could blame them either? They have done some shady stuff. However now community relations are at an all-time high now and that seems like a good reason to pick up the game. The developers are listening and communicating somewhat effectively, they are actively building the backstory to the game and delivering things that the community wants. They even went so far as to improve the netcode after YouTube personality Battle(non)Sense released his video testing and discussing the -at the time- poor netcode and high delay within the game.

This may have been a year ago but it shows just how much good the developers are trying to do now with communication and updates towards criticism. I don’t believe that the COO of Battlestate Games would lash out at criticism now the way he did over this video. Posting to Reddit he throws a temper tantrum at the myriad of people in the thread who have judged the games overall quality based off of the video.

Though some of the points made are valid, such as stating the game is still in Beta and thus not a reflection of the final product, a little nuance should have been taken in his approach. In turn, the negative backlash of the comment could have been received better by the public if the response was handled with more care. So why all the hype?

THE CULT, 0.12 AND THE STRATOSPHERE

n a way, Eroktic was correct: Tarkov is like a cult. Everyone wants something fixed but they also look forward to the big stuff. Since all the videos and the situation with Eroktic, Tarkov has seen a massive increase in player numbers – in no small part due to the cult-like actions of the player base. We get hyped for the good stuff. It’s like DLC, but good DLC… it’s necessary due to the game being in Beta. Without it, it’s just unfinished, unpolished, lazy indie trash. As such the team tell us what we should expect in future updates. Not what to expect in this update, this, in turn, leads to the hype. Should we expect this or that? A or B? Very few things are divulged to be contained within specific patches. That was until Patch 0.12

Here are the Patch Notes for 0.12. That’s a big list. Only 4 of those things were confirmed for this patch: the new trader, the new map, the new Scav Boss and the Hideout. It was only a few weeks before the patch came out did we find out there would be 2 new scav bosses. We knew one would be on the new map. Every time something was announced it was met with people asking “When is the wipe?”. For the uninitiated – Every major update (around 4 months) there is a wipe, it’s essentially a reset. Even playing field where your skill and knowledge are the determining factors in gunfights. Not who has the best ammo, most modded weapon, better armour. No. Skill & game knowledge are key… for about 48 hours.

This is where the top content creators are at their most popular. Servers are flooded and the high skill ceiling of this game is taken to a primal level. How quickly will they reach the point where a “Labs Run” has a survival chance of over 30%? Of course, the big content creators have to find ways around this. Once you complete every task given to you by the traders what do you have? A few stats left to max out and money to waste. What do you do? You try a different approach. This is where streamer and content creator DeadlySlob comes into his element.

Tarkov is already pretty hard. There are some quality of life improvements that help this however. Things such as the “Flea Market” – this allows players to buy specific things for guns or get better armour or even some quest items that do not need to be “Found in raid”. What if you remove the flea market? Then throw away your money and all the guns you have at the beginning, then only trade items with traders – sure 12 bars of soap for an MP5 might seem like a good trade, but now you have to mod that MP5 for a quest. I think I’ve only ever found 1 MP5 in a raid before. The “Hardcore Tarkov” series that DeadlySlob produces explores just that. Slightly different rules each time but he won’t use the money. Just find that super rare item with a 0.03% chance of being dropped in the raid. I recommend you watch this series.
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POPULARITY

Jumping back to the introduction of 0.12, with a new map and 2 new Scav Bosses topped with some new quality of life changes, new life was given to the game. No longer did we have the same old maps. “WOODS” – a map that takes place… well, in the woods… saw a new addition to the central point of the map. Regardless of your spawn point, you ran the risk of passing by the new Scav Boss and his minions. Now Scav Bosses range in difficulty – some wear no armour, some wear level 5. Their crew? Geared. You might kill the boss, but his boys are the real danger. But danger brings hype. The image below shows how much this game blew up recently. Stats are from TwitchTracker.com. Anything highlighted in Yellow is a Wipe. Clearly, it took some time from 0.12 to get to where we are. But in 1 year, to get that far. It’s commendable if nothing else.

You won’t believe it but the new map and the bosses were not even the biggest hype points of this patch, the hideout was. After all, what was the hideout, what was its purpose? Well, the game got more hardcore. Nobody knew how hardcore but as it turns out, out of raid damage transferred to the loadout, the thing is the loadout was now essentially happening in the hideout. This meant when you escaped, you went back to your hideout; injuries and all. Now you could use healing items or let the natural regeneration rate kick in, the thing about this however. It is tied to the level of the hideout. A full hideout could have you ready in less time. Granted it could still be hours but what’s better: a 3-hour wait or 1-hour wait? There’s loot waiting.

So here we are. This game started getting popular due to who you watch on YouTube and Twitch? In essence yes. Most of the controversy stayed contained within most of the community. Nobody is talking about the Eroktic situation now, nobody cares about the refund policy. Everyone is talking about the “No Female PMCs” right now but that’s still developing as we speak, so that’s a story for another day. This game ultimately got organically popular. Through streamers and YouTube content creators – the devs had free advertising. I don’t doubt that someone out there had no idea what this game was but watched RAID. That is highly plausible. Nobody new knows about these controversial moments because they are not key talking points right now. The developers are doing everything right and with how popular the game is on Twitch with all the smaller streamers

WHY KEEP PLAYING BEFORE THEN?

To, quote myself: ‘What keeps people playing Escape from Tarkov’

Fun fact… that was over 12 paragraphs ago. If you made it this far then I should thank you and also be envious – you have a greater attention span than myself. Now – let’s dig deep. Tarkov has a very simple gameplay loop – Go in, loot, shoot, kill, escape. Rinse and Repeat until all tasks are done. It’s only slightly more complex than Tic-Tac-Toe when you compare the gameplay loop, so why play? Why play a game that needs literal XML Spreadsheets with every bullet type and penetration, damage and velocity stat to aid new players? Well for me that’s the thing: this game makes you love the slow, intense and sneaking action of maps by breaking it up with either extreme PVP situations – Remember a stay bullet can ruin your whole run – or a high loot haul that makes every close gunshot that bit scarier. This game produces adrenaline at such a scary quantity that when you win a huge gunfight the dopamine and serotonin levels in your brain say “That’s good – let’s do that more.” Then boom… you’re addicted.

That however, that is just me. I have friends (shocker I know) who also play this game. I asked each one of them the following question:

You got into EFT knowing full well how brutal it was – Did you know of any the controversies surrounding the game before you got into it and what actually keeps you playing it despite the multitude of issues

Every one of them gave me an answer. Now I want to turn some qualitative data into quantitative data. To do that we need to rip apart my question. To do this we will look for answers to the following:

• Knew of the Difficulty
• Knew of the Controversy
• Friends
• Fun (Looked and is)

All of this qualitative can be made quantitative in this regard. Of course, some things need to be given context as well. To give context to the first part however, this is a very small sample. I could only get 4 answers and I was not going to ask random strangers on servers I am in. That being said here is the data that I was able to breakdown from the answers, I will share these answers with you after this.

• Difficulty – 3/4
• Controversy – 1/4
• Friends – 2/4
• Fun – 4/4

TESTIMONIALS

Do you ever just look at something and say “I hope this does not happen” and it does. 1, 2, 3, 4… In regards to this, you have every right to be sceptical, but, I shall explain how we got here. This issue stems from pulling quantitative data from qualitative – If you don’t get specific words you need to use Justification. I am lucky that my justifications are not flimsy, however, I can only do this due to the small sample size. It truly is a blessing and a curse. What I will now do is I will show each of these statements and say who wrote them and my relationship to them. I did get permission before posting these.

ArsynTV – A streamer – we are in the same Team and have played a few games. Sound guy check him out.

I asked ArsynTV that question and his response was not what I expected from a man who streams the game 5 days out of 7. In the quote (Photo above) Arsyn states that he never actually thought about the game, but a friend bought him it. I would say given his whole discord server is almost 100% Tarkov and his streams are 100% Tarkov… he likes the game and finds it fun. He knew it would be difficult, but I don’t count him in knowing of this games specific difficulty as this game is totally different from the ARMA and DayZ games. Given his start time, however, he would have been blind to the Eroktic controversy as well as the No Refund policy – not that it would pertain to him being gifted the game and all.

Next up on the list is my boy Pickles – goes by Chichukin now, but he’ll always be my (IEatDill)Pickles. I have to take a pinch of credit here. He saw me playing the game and asked me if it was good. I always said “I would never recommend this game to anyone.”, I still don’t. Clearly, Pickles done is own research and concluded it was a game for him. So he dropped 2 billion Canadian roubles on the game. His response is easier to digest:

Pickles was unaware of the controversial past of the game. I did tell him about the no refunds but I don’t think he knew how much that blew up. He knew how hard the game was but he still played. His comment about the “Addictive” gameplay loop and how “…that one Good raid” makes every bad raid before it seem worth it. I do feel my justification for him saying the game is “Fun” is warranted.

CrazyCorky – or just Corky to us – his is the shortest of all responses but also the most wholesome. He was unaware of the controversial past, knew it was hard but he just wanted to play with his friends. Wholesome and then some.

Kasoyavich – This dude straight up flanked me and my guys something awful one raid. The thing about the community is when you get killed by “NameTTV” you go there. What did you get killed by and from where? You give it the “GGWP” and maybe – if they’re cool – drop a follow (or even a sub if you have prime). My man wrote a small essay. Let’s break it down.

Kas knew of the game before any controversy – because he said “before any controversy”, leads me to believe he knew of them. Top that with him knowing of the Eroktic situation. He also just plays the game out of respect for the developers – though hot-headed and always engaging their mouth before their brain – he likes the changes they implement and how much they have been discussing stuff with the community. His 3rd paragraph gives me a reason to say he finds the game fun – it reads like a glowing recommendation. He plays this game because he likes this game and knows of the controversy but does not care. It’s truly commendable.

ME?

“But Matthew” I hear you ask, “Why do you play?”. Good question. I play because my friends play, I know the controversial crap the devs have done and I’ve read it all and yes it seems immature… but they are still learning. Tarkov is a great game with a steep learning curve, it just so happens to be a 90 degrees angle but once you start to understand the mechanics and get a few raids under your belt, eliminate the fear of failure, you start to enjoy the game, and it’s better with friends. That I can’t deny. It’s kinda like life.

CONCLUSION

It’s been a week. A whole week since I started this. Journalism, that’s not for me. I think I will stick to game reviews. We came here to conclude this dissertation and that’s what we will do. So, in conclusion: Escape from Tarkov has had a very rocky and checked past, despite all that though, the game still got organically popular through YouTube, Twitch and word of mouth. Though the developers do need to learn a few things, it does come down to the mouthpiece is when they speak.

Just as an example – The most recent controversy that is still developing is “No women PMCs”

his is still developing so I will not cover it but, I will say that the article this outrage spans from is from 2016. Again, depending upon who is talking, the answer will vary wildly in how it is delivered.

If you can excuse how the developers act in the face of criticizm or simply don’t care then what are you left with? A passion project that sees frequent udpates, organic growth and a community that wont hesitate to install air conditioning in your head but also sake your hand and say “Good game, Well played” at the end. This game is not “baby’s first FPS”, this game is “Daddy’s reason for anger management”. I still do not reccomend this game – I could never reccomend this game. It’s not for everyone and I won’t sit and try to convince you it is for you. Even though we have performance issues with the game right now – chalk that up to BETA.

So there you go guys – the past and present of Tarkov, the eggs that made the omelette and a small justification. If you wish to buy this game I won’t stop you, If you already bought the game then you have my best wishes, if you don’t want to buy this game anymore – I don’t blame you. Tell me though – were you ever concidering picking up this game? Has this piece swayed you in 1 direction over the other? I do recognise how negative this essay seems but, have you ever heard of a controversy that wasen’t negative?

Thanks for reading guys – I’ve been Matthew, A.K.A ItsScottish – It’s been a pleasure. Enjoy the rest of your day.