Another massive ban wave hits Escape From Tarkov

Bill Cooney

Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate Games appears to already have started on some spring cleaning by banning thousands of cheaters to cap off the month of May.

Like any popular multiplayer FPS out there, Tarkov has its fair share of players who feel, for one reason or the other, that they need to use hacks or cheats to gain an advantage.

In the constant battle against cheaters, mass bans are usually a publisher’s way of sending a message, and Battlestate did exactly that by apparently banning over 4,400 accounts in the last few days of May 2020.

Battlestate's head dev Nikita has confirmed the long-awaited Tarkov server wipe is coming
In a game where dying matters way more than others, cheaters in Tarkov are particularly infuriating.

On May 29, Reddit user SyrasX posted that they had been notified of over 3,000 bans coming from Tarkov’s BattelEye anti-cheat system.

“Just now, BattlEye has banned over 3,000 cheaters in EFT,” they relayed from the EFT Telegram. “We decided that we will now let you know about large BE ban waves.”

It seems the publisher is sticking to their word, because on May 31 they announced almost 1,500 bans, and promised players that the “fight” against cheaters would continue.

But despite these impressive numbers, some Tarkov players aren’t convinced Battlestate is doing enough to really fix the problem.

“BSG have been banning this many for a little while now and it has done nothing in the larger scheme of things,” CartmanBrah23 asserted in response to the Reddit post. “This news is somewhat meaningless, unfortunately.”

Tarkov devs seem to be taking aim at cheaters, but will it be enough to actually change things?

The new policy of sharing Tarkov ban numbers by Battlestate came right along with the latest character wipe resetting player’s progress with the release of the 0.12.6.7456 patch on Thursday, May 28.

Character resets are always the big news in patches, but the update also improved Scavs to cooperate together, and also sought to cut down on botting in the flea market by implementing a captcha system.