First of all let me start out with saying, this isn't directly relevant to the recent controversy but does generally speak volumes about how the studio/company is being ran.

Backstory:

Recently I have undergone the effort to update my email on all of my accounts because it was leaked online. I have had very little problems doing this with most companies and account (50+ accounts). Some companies might have a slightly more drawn out process but generally we able to achieve update my email.

Performing this task with BattleStateGames for my EscapeFromTarkov account has been the most painful by far. My support request has been open for almost 3 weeks.

Let me explain whats gone on in more detail...

My experience with BattleStateGames Support:

I am happy to share the complete support transcript once I am done battling them to get my email changed but for now I wanted provide some information for other users who may wish to do this in the future.

First of all, the option to update your email is currently not available, you have to contact support. No problem I said to myself, this isn't beyond reasonable.

I opened a support case and they told me that they can't change it and that I should contact my email provider if I lost access to that email. Since I am a resident of a country that has strict data protection laws, they are legally obligated to perform this email change. I sent them a link to the specific law and they changed there mind, suddenly they are able to change my email.

Though they have now said they can change my email they wanted me to jump through a lot of hoops first. Support told me in order for them to change my email, they needed the following information:

• Screenshots of the pre-order purchase receipts from your payment system.

• The email address that was used to create the account initially.

• The login name associated with the account.

• All game nicknames that you have used.

I purchased the game nearly 7 years ago, which is just about the limit for financial companies to keep records of this stuff. Also, expecting someone to remember all in game nicknames over a 7 year period is frankly ridiculous.

These requirements are so over the top, I already got the feeling they were trying to make this unachievable so they had an excuse not to comply with my countries law. An easier solution to this problem I have seen is, to provide formal ID that matched the purchaser name on the initial transaction.

Any way, I managed to track down all the information they asked for and provided the new email I would like to use. This email is using a custom domain so a little different to your standard user. I manage my own domain for my emails since having my email leaked because it gives me some nice options to avoid spam when addresses get leaked.

Their support simply advised they can't use that domain and the domain has to be from one of the big tech companies like gmail (without any reasoning to why). I asked them to explain to me why they couldn't use my domain since I am the owner of the domain. They simply referred to their previous message without any further explanation.

I didn't believe support at this point, they had already lied to me in the first place saying they couldn't change my email, only changing their mind when I brought up the law (in my country).

I decided to create another email address on my domain and try registering an account with this email to test if I can in fact use this domain. Unsurprisingly this worked, I was able to create a new account and am able purchase another copy of the game using this email with the same domain I requested they change to.

This suggests that they are lying to me about changing my email and trying their absolute best to avoid having to do this.

Conclusion:

With the recent controversy and now this, I am at a point where I simply don't trust this company. Why does changing my email have to be a 3 week endeavour and why the lies?

They seem to not be following good practices of operating procedures and I am done supporting this kind of behavior from companies. I will likely have my account closed permanently and not play the game again.

Anyway, I wanted to share this experience for other players or future players so they know what sort of company they are dealing with before signing up.

I am not an original author of these images but I did research it and all the information seems to be true.

This information in russian speaking groups are censored and anyone even mentioning the name gets a ban.

Hopefully I can share this here for people to see especially when everyone is talking about Nikitas cult like behaviour.

I do not know if it's safe to talk about on stream but I think this needs to be brought out into the daylight especially for the English speaking community.

If I broke any rules I am very sorry but everywhere else this information seems to be censored heavily.

Thank you to Nikita and BSG for showing us how much we can trust you as developers. Your recent actions towards backlash and critisim from the community. Has shown me we are nothing more than ATM to your company. It is finally time for me to Escape from Tarkov. Thank you for showing your true colors.

I played Escape from Tarkov years ago and quit but now it is showing up everywhere on my feed. Something about new pay to win? Even though the premium edition of the games was already $120+ USD. From what I read they are adding a new addition that breaks some laws or something. The subreddit:

Hey guys, we need a history of things that have transpired since April 24th. It needs to be documented. We need to share this with all our friends and fellow gaming communities to prevent this from happening in the gaming industry. If you have anything to add to this, please just throw it in the comments and I will edit it into the post in chronological order as best as I can.

The Things we know so far.

April 24th, 2024 - that the game will undergo a 6hour maintenance for the installation of a new patch -0.14.6.0 (Reddit formatting issue) with players largely expecting changes to the armor system, hitboxes etc,

April 25th, 2024 - the teaser trailer for a new edition of the game, "" and tell players the. Once community members start reading about the pushback begins. Players are upset at the & included in the Unheard Edition, the , the , the exclusion of the from all editions except the Unheard Edition, and the misuse of community trust. Players of the Tarkov community take to & X to complain about the changes only to be met with An upcoming competitor sees the drama in the community and decides to and launches Multiple content creators such as and others - into a roast of BSG. and the

April 26th, 2024 - The next day things are quiet in the morning, although the have been keeping some hope, , alive amongst the community members throughout the night. After a short wait, leaving the community feeling and . for different game versions. Content creators from other communities, who have never even played the game before, , a discord personality, is leaked to the public. . , a popular content creator and ex-community manager, starts streaming the SPT mod (Single Player Modded Tarkov) after receiving explicit permission from Nikita in protest and to showcase options that aren't 250$. The community backlash continues on Reddit, X, & Discord and hope is still at an all time low with the

April 27th, 2024 - The Saturday after the implosion the community information digging has reached an all-time high. More game communities like & jump into the drama on X. . . Players are again left frustrated and unheard. Companies like . and Again this community is left in disarray.

April 28th, 2024 - , filled with more compromises and things that should've been included from the start. , feel this is a step in the right direction after the chaos that has ensued. given from BSG and Twitter continues to . @Evasion_GG on Twitter

April 29th, 2024 - It is the beginning of a new week and the community starts off strong. , a smaller content creator for Tarkov, .

May 1st, 2024 - .

May 3rd, 2024 - points out that .

Thanks for all the help with this! I'm going to play Grayzone for now. <3 Ty for the memories.

Feels like we're going to get an influx of Tarkov players here soon, so I'm gonna copy-paste a comment I just had to send to someone else on the sub to clear a couple things up:

"This is not Escape From Tarkov. This is Gray Zone Warfare, a different game with different objectives and playstyles being encouraged.

Do you see Bitcoins? Vases? Cats? Lions? Chains? No?

That's because random dopamine-spiking loot everywhere isn't the goal of Gray Zone. It's about completing objectives, usually as a squad or platoon, and trying not to lose whenever you cross swords with competing factions on the map at the same time. They said there won't be a flea market in the Q&A, because they don't want money to be the ultimate measure of success in the game.

There’s vastly, vastly fewer items around the map that you’ll gain anything by bringing back with you. Selling to the vendors is never worth it (sell prices suck/you don’t gain rep that way), and almost all your money is made by completing tasks, not ratting for Bitcoins.

The game is intentionally designed to get away from the constant chest checking, and wants you to spend more time in PvE, PvP, and completing tasks. Part of this is due to the lack of a Scav system, which is where having most of that random sellable loot makes sense.

Instead at the end game it's mostly about one faction hopefully dominating their respective server through tactics and collective operations. Not lone rats creeping around the map with knives opening the same stupid ass chest for the 78th time today. Just pulling on that lever, hoping some sugar water (a GPU) will finally come out THIS time.

Don't get me wrong, I love Tarkov. But once you see the underlying mechanics at work, and see what Gray Zone is doing differently, one game sounds vastly more fun than the other.

Not slot machine fun. Actual fun."

I Escaped From Tarkov, I think you should too.

Currently on the official tarkov discord server, people are spamming this copypaste as an angry response to what tarkov did, many streamer also came out against it.

For the context to those who dont play tarkov, tarkov is a seasonal, multiplay extract shooter that has a base price of 59USD, while having different p2w bundle ranging from 79 to 159. The bundle includes extra starter content and inventory space that a normal player would spend weeks to grind for each season, also has exclusive content such as gold gametag. Because tarkov does not have other in-game purchase other than the heavily priced bundle, players were OK with it, and thanks to tarkov's unique gameplay, the game gained a lot of popularity in the past few years, nearly every tarkov gamer that I know of, have purchased 150usd bundle because of the advantages it gives. Tarkov also had nearly no competitor, all similar contenders died one after another, the surviving tarkov competitors that I can think of right now are Chinese copy from Tencent and NetEase, and Call of duty's DMZ mode.

However, tarkov discontinued their most expensive "edge of the darkness" bundle (150USD) a few month ago and today they replaced it with a 250usd "Unheard" bundle. The bundle includes more p2w content such as

• extra pocket slot,

• increased start level of your character skill, increased stash space and even higher starting reputation with traders

• exclusive single-player mode that does not wipe each season

• exclusive hideout zone and even signal transmitter to communicate with other players in-game

• faster insurance pay speed, more sell slot on in-game market, and 50% discount on in-game cash service

• a "unique melee weapon" that is a 7 usd unity store asset flip

• AI will not shoot you beyond 60 meters after reaching max reputation with Fence (a faction in game)

Unlike the 150 p2w version, many of these are completely exclusive and are fairly OP in a such tactical seasonal multiplay shooter game.

Player and streamers are mocking this situation and even Arena Breakout, a Tencent's tarkov copy, came out to mock on the situation, made a tweet says "We will never scam our players unlike some other games! We will soon open our closed beta on Steam", basically a free PR for any Tarkov competitor. Another Czech based tactical shooter that was just recently released, called "GreyZone Warfare" is also mocking the tarkov situation, with a tweet "How many do you think our game cost? 35, 45, 55, 250?"

I’ve never played Tarkov before but I feel like I hate this dude.