Ah, welcome to Friday evening, folks, and a video game doing a little bit o’ name-and-shame on some dastardly cheaters.
The game is multiplayer shooter Escape From Tarkov, which doesn’t exactly have a spotless reputation itself, but Russian developer Battlestate released a Google doc spreadsheet exposing the names of over 4000 cheaters banned thanks to its anticheat software. (TechCrunch says the number is actually 6700).
“We have decided to resume the practice of sharing the information about large ban waves done with the support of BattleEye anticheat,” the studio says. “Throughout the weekend over 4,000 cheaters were banned in Escape from Tarkov.”
“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,” a Battlestate spox later told TechCrunch.
Escape From Tarkov first made it to MassivelyOP’s pages back in 2015, believe it or not, when it was still in very early development. It rolled into open beta in 2018 (and is still in beta all these years later), but it has not been without its controversies as Battlestate vetoed female characters over “game lore” and abused DMCA takedowns against YouTube critics.
While TechCrunch suggests that exposing the names of cheaters is a rare occurrence, it’s actually a practice the MOP community has been discussing and debating for a very long time, and we have quite a few examples of naming-and-shaming in MMOs, including in Guild Wars 2, Riders of Icarus, Tree of Savior, EVE Online, and MechWarrior Online. We also have examples of studios like Bethsoft and Daybreak demanding written apologies and essays from cheaters.
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
