How to Save Escape from Tarkov

To give some background for my Tarkov experience (real game journo moment here), I have played roughly 3 wipes and have 1300 hours (not nearly as much as most) but each wipe has fully engrossed me into the game every time I jumped back in. This wipe has widely been considered Battle State Games’ best possibly ever and I hit the ground running Day 1. Nearly 5 months, 600+ hours, and honestly a handful of really great patches later we are collectively sitting here watching BSG actively burn their game to ground by introducing pay to win mechanics and a PvE Unheard ONLY mode, in a whopping 250 fucking dollar bundle. Not only are they adding predatory incentives to buy this insane bundle, they are also quite frankly fucking every Edge of Darkness backer in the process. Edge of Darkness was designed to be the “hey we trust you and this Tarkov project, here is some more money and we secure DLC for the rest of this games’ life span” edition of Escape from Tarkov. Think of a premium backer tier on a KickStarter. Well guess what folks we EoD backers don’t get shit from this 250$ Unheard of Price edition unless we shell out another 100$. I won’t cover everything going on with BSG right now and how they are alienating their content creators and player base at large with each version of them doubling, tripling, and this morning quadrupling down. However, I have seen a ton of great content creators out there offer their opinions on what they WOULD love to give Battle State money for to help support this game because as of right now it looks like they are last ditch effort grasping at as much money they possibly can and treading water financially (all subjective). I have had this idea since the first time I ever loaded into my hideout in Tarkov 3 years ago and I think now would be a great time for BSG to listen the fuck up and try to salvage some of their playerbase and put some more coin in their thick pockets.

Without covering all of the super basic ways Battle State can integrate less to non predatory microtransactions into Tarkov such as cosmetics, voice lines, emotes, etc, I want to get right to one very specific idea I think a large amount of the playerbase would fucking eat up. For most people I would argue a good 25% of their time in game actually takes place in their hideouts, stashes, or cycling through vendors (although now with global limits removed maybe not the latter as much). What if Battle State were to create an app on your phone or desktop that lives separately from the EFT launcher where players can link their accounts (just like they already do with Twitch) and can access the traders, their stashes and hideouts? Make it a 5$ monthly subscription, hell make it fucking 5$ for the traders, 10$ for traders and stash and 15$ for hideout too, people would fucking eat that shit up. Outside of battle pass bullshit and cosmetic shilling, the next most successful avenue for recurring payments would be a subscription model. An individualized app on your phone or desktop you can pay 5$ a month for as yet another “pay for convenience” type of deal would be beneficial to not only BSG but the players as well. Battle State is getting monthly money in their wallets and the players finally have the opportunity to access their stashes and hideouts while waiting in the ungodly long queue times. It is a fucking easy win-win for both sides. This should all come AFTER BSG right the many wrongs of this latest patch and bundle, but you get the gist of it.

It is unfortunate at how storied Battle State have become for notoriously NOT listening to their community, but damn man like now is the time. There are only a handful of games I have ever really dedicated 1000+ hours to and I have never once had to sit here and watch as one burned down in front of me. Maybe with some OldSchool RuneScape scares of the past, but Battle State, Nikita, fucking anyone out their with a larger voice than mine, if you are reading this, give it a shot man. Let the players support your game in a way we would be happy to…not this fucking 250$ Unheard of bullshit.