Escape From Tarkov studio threatens to ban anyone who shares information gained from 'illegal datamining'
Escape From Tarkov developer Battlestate Games is drawing a hard line in the sand against datamining. The studio said in an announcement today that it is going to start banning all accounts belonging to dataminers and anyone who shares the information they discover.
«Datamining is defined as extracting information from massive datasets,» Battlestate said. «In other words, it is the illegal infiltration of in-game code and databases in order to extract information that is intentionally hidden from users.»
It bears stating right from the hop that datamining, broadly speaking, is not illegal. How you dig through data might be a problem, and what you do with the results—if for example you use it to reverse-engineer some cheats and then sell them online—could definitely land you in some hot water. But while developers may not like it when enterprising gamers take a tiptoe through their tulips and reveal their secrets to the world, it's not illegal.
It's also interesting that it doesn't appear to be the potential for cheats that's the concern here, but that dataminers are revealing things that Battlestate would rather keep hidden, ranging from specific boss spawn chances to new quests and rewards that haven't been officially announced. The studio said that sharing this kind of information reduces the «wow effect» and makes the game «much more predictable,» and that it's also unfair to developers when future plans are spoiled by dataminers the moment an update goes live.
Instead, Battlestate said Escape From Tarkov players should make use of official sources only, both to get hyped for upcoming features and changes, and to find specific data about the game. It also promised to try to be more transparent about its plans for the
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