Russian game developer bans and doxes 6,700 cheaters
techcrunch.comCheaters are an annoying part of almost every online video game. And banning them has become an important routine for game developers and publishers to keep their users happy.
The publisher of Escape from Tarkov, a game developed by the Russian company Battlestate Games, has added an unusual twist to the routine: naming and shaming the cheaters. In the last week, Battlestate Games said it banned 6,700 cheaters, and it published all their nicknames on publicly available spreadsheets.
“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,” Battlestate Games’ spokesperson Dmitri Ogorodnikov told TechCrunch.
<p lang=«en» dir=«ltr» xml:lang=«en»>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
Other companies, such as Call of Duty publisher Activision, or Valorant’s developer Riot Games, usually just announce the number of players they banned — not their nicknames and handles.
People in the industry believe the approach taken by Battlestate Games may be more effective and act as a better deterrent.
“Good. I wish we did it too,” an employee at a video game company, who works in the anti-cheat department and asked to remain anonymous as they were not authorized to speak to the press, told TechCrunch. “Many cheaters fabricate a false image to their friends and significant others, and when their deceitful behavior is exposed publicly, it brings shame to their name and discourages them from
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