If you’ve not heard of the extraction shooter game Escape from Tarkov by Battelstate Games, buckle up and prepare for the wildest scam you’ve ever heard of in the gaming industry. We cover a ton of scams and hustles here on BSO, but the Russian creators of Tarkov exist on Super Saiyan plane that future hustlers and con artists could only dream of achieving. But before we get to the conning and the scammin’, we should probably set the stage for our events. Most importantly, I should explain what the game is for the uninitiated.
Escape from Tarkov is an extraction shooter that mixes PvP and PvE elements to create an intense limited engagement experience where players drop into a zone inhabited by other players and enemy AI and complete missions to extract valuables and resources they can they can use on future infiltrations. It’s similar to DMZ in Call of Duty or Modern Warfare Zombies. The game lists itself as being in “beta testing,” but that’s been happening for seven years.
While the game has a massive cheating problem that it seems completely disinterested in solving, they have been gradually adding new modes and new features to the game that players can try out. One of those modes was an arena shooter variation of Tarkov called Tarkov Arena., It was Battlestate Games’ biggest gamble yet, and it was released not too long ago but it absolutely tanked. The critics torched the game upon release claiming the gameplay was horrid and unfinished, a sentiment shared by the player-base who gave up on the game almost instantaneously. BSG is notoriously private about any financial matters, but it’s speculated that they lost a ton of money on the endeavor and may be looking at financial problems as a result of the failure. This all leads directly into our story of greed.
BSG had previously released a $150 edition of their game called the Edge of Darkness pack, commonly called EOD by the dedicated community. In addition to the rare loot and unique items promised in this edition, BSG also promised that ANY future DLC would be given to these players free of charge. I’m going to repeat this again. BSG stated that gamers purchasing the EOD edition would not have to pay for a single new major addition to the game after their one-time purchase. This wasn’t the only thing promised, but we’re gonna start here since it’s the biggest part of the story.
Flash forward to this week when BSG announces they have a brand new bundle on their story that features the long-anticipated and community-demanded PvE-only mode. This mode allows players to skip the rampant cheating and focus on playing purely against enemy AI. There’s just one problem, anyone who wants this feature has to now pay $250 for the all-new Unheard of Edition. That’s right. The DLC is not free, it’s actually $250! Think this is bad, it gets worse.
After an outright mutiny against BSG for their deceptive practices, you’d think they did the smart thing and backtracked, right? They obviously made it right by the player-base and rethought this Unheard of Edition plan, right? Hell no. BSG doubled down stating that the PvE-only mode wasn’t DLC, it was a new feature so it didn’t qualify. That’s right, it’s a feature and not DLC. The scamming doesn’t stop there.
One of the official moderators of the company-run discord server for Escape From Tarkov caught the developers changing the wording of the previous EOD edition live during a chat. Yep, to cover their tracks, the developers shadily removed the part where it said EOD buyers got all future DLC for free so they could pretend like they never said it. They even changed the wording of the other rewards that they backtracked on during this web “update” as well.
https://www.twitch.tv/lvndmark/clip/AmazonianFantasticMonkeyOSkomodo-xFpPudrTMqvexDYl
If you’re interested in reading the absurd number of retroactive changes Battelstate Games made to money, several big-name YouTube accounts have covered the fallout. Industry names like SomeOrdinaryGamers and Charles “MoistCr1TiKaL” White shone a light on the seedy buttcrack of BSG’s greed and it shined bright. When I say I have never seen a company react like this to criticism, I am including the likes of Activision, EA, and Ubisoft. If the CEOs of those companies got an erection watching this level of greed, you know BSG is floating in rarified air.
It took a week of just getting pilloried on all sides before BSG founder and Escape From Tarkov creator Nikita Buyanov did an about-face and recognized he wasn’t going to win this war and pressing further would put the nail in his game’s coffin. As of now, BSG has promised that the EOD buyers will, in fact, be getting their free DLC but they’re going to leave the $250 Unheard of Edition up in the store — they will be modifying their original rewards for purchasing this edition and it won’t quite feature their original promises — for those who want to “support” Tarkov. I guess this is a win, but we will keep you updated on further developments here on BSO.
Something tells me this isn’t the last we’ve heard of this story.