Escape from Tarkov – Does the shooter have a cheater problem?

The last few days have been very turbulent for the Escape from Tarkov community, to say the least. First, a “cheater video” caused a stir and many discussions, followed by announcements of changes on the part of the developers to stem the cheat wave.

The Cheater Video

The Tarkov Youtuber g0atmoth published a video a few days ago that hit the Tarkov community like a bomb. In this video, he gets to the bottom of the question of how big the cheater problem in Escape from Tarkov really is.

For your information: The developers of Escape from Tarkov rarely give out information on this topic and in general, official information on topics like player numbers, active players, average levels, but also on the cheating situation is rather scarce.

So g0at is now on the lookout for clues by obtaining cheat software for Escape from Tarkov and starting the game with a new account. According to his own information, he didn’t kill a single player with these cheats and tried to get an impression of the cheating situation in 125 raids.

The software used is shockingly extensive and not only shows all players including information such as group and their KD rate through walls, but also information such as the weapon used, the ammunition in the magazine and their health points.
It also shows if there is a real line of sight to the player – and a kind of “radar” shows the line of sight of all players nearby.

Armed with this software, the Youtuber has now gone into a lot of raids and found out based on his experiences: In about 60% of these raids, at least one player was present who also cheated.
For verification, the cheaters use “wiggling”, i.e. aiming at each other and wiggling the character back and forth, even if there is no line of sight – to signal that they are avoiding each other. g0at also found this out during his research.
With this knowledge he animated suspected players to perform this gesture.

In some cases, he even got verification via voice chat, with information that only players with software similar to yours could have.

Thus, g0atmoth confirms – at least based on his own research – the suspicion that Escape from Tarkov has a cheater problem.

Reactions from the community

The reactions from the community were not long in coming. Many accused the youtuber of exacerbating the problem with such a video and even promoting such cheats. In particular, many Escape from Tarkov streamers were critical of the issue, fearing for the game’s reputation and their viewership.
And still others thank g0atmoth for his unvarnished look at a problem that is probably only known to the developers of the game themselves.

Overall, the feedback on the video from the community was rather positive, but also with a warning finger that the topic should not be exploited with cheating itself.

Many players also accused the developers of not doing enough against the cheater waves and even profiting from it when many new copies of the game are purchased after a ban wave.

Shortly after that, Nikita Bujanov, the head of Battlestate Games spoke up via Reddit, but the words in his post almost sounded copied, because a post with the same content had already been made three and four years ago.

Due to the content, however, many saw the fact confirmed that the game really has to fight with a cheater problem.
Afterwards, Battlestate Games published a statement that showed over 700 banned cheaters in a list.

Developers announce further measures

So now it’s up to the developers to restore the game’s reputation and prove their efforts in the fight against cheaters.

Battlestate Game has already announced that it will continue to fight against real money trade (“RMT”) by making changes to the flea market and will also continue to work with the developers of BattleEye on better and faster detection of cheaters.