Escape From Tarkov is going through a severe cheater crisis which isn't too surprising when you get to know that another game's anti-cheat is better at detecting your own cheaters.
Escape From Tarkov from Battlestate Games is a hardcore extraction shooter, meaning you stand to lose everything you are carrying, should you fail to extract from the map along with the loot you came across.
This is a double-edged sword as the concept creates high stakes that ultimately produce an amazing adrenaline rush and countless dopamine hits during the whole "drop-in, loot, kill and extract" process but it also feels very bad when you lose it all upon death.
It feels even worse when you lose it because of a cheater. Unfortunately, this happens way too often in the game, which is why it stings even more that Valorant 's anti-cheat is better at identifying Escape From Tarkov cheaters than the game's own BattlEye.
The incredible findings about BattlEye's shortcomings were aired somewhat indirectly. It all began with g0at's investigative journey into the world of cheaters in Tarkov, which consisted of using cheats in 125 raids in order to figure out just how many had cheaters in them.
His findings were published in the now-famous video "The Wiggle That Killed Tarkov", which refers to a secret handshake used by cheaters to identify and team up with each other mid-raid.
In the end, g0at estimated that about 60 per cent of the raids had a cheater in them which is already a horrifying statistic but the worse part is that he didn't want to start witch hunts so the number is often seen as low or conservative by others who watched the video or witnessed similar behaviour in-game.
Soon after, the content creator uploaded a follow-up video "Am I Banned" where he explained that the account he used the cheats on to expose other cheaters had indeed been banned. After all, g0at uploaded a public video with the account's info while showing the cheat's UI and it is an outcome he expected.
What he didn't expect is to find out that Valorant's anti-cheat could detect Escape From Tarkov cheats even though the game's own anti-cheat didn't.
Upon installing the cheat in question, it prompted the user to completely uninstall a list of software, including Riot Vanguard, which is Valorant's anti-cheat. This was a clear indication that Vanguard would detect Escape From Tarkov cheats which BattlEye couldn't.
It may sound like a bold claim to just state BattlEye couldn't detect it but the cheat g0at used had been going undetected for two years, with the cheat maker claiming they had around 4,000 concurrent users online at some point. Yes, this is 4,000 cheaters using just one cheat maker's software, all at the same time, meaning the total number of users is actually much higher.
Such a cascade of events paints a rather sad picture of modern FPS gaming as it points to intrusive anti-cheats being the only viable solution. Riot Vanguard has been doing an outstanding job thus far and Valorant players are generally enjoying a cheat-free environment.
The other side of the coin is that by using Vanguard, you are leaving your PC wide open for an attack and are trusting a corporation not to do anything malicious with it.
With those things in mind, FPS players are left with a no-win situation and the only choice they get is between exposing their computer or losing countless hours that were invested in their favourite game just because some nincompoop paid for illegal software.
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