Battlestate Games, the developer of "Tarkov," is taking a medieval approach to the game's cheaters. According to Techcrunch (opens in new tab), Battlestate banned 6,700 cheaters from Tarkov last week, and has been publicly shaming them. in an easy-to-read spreadsheet (opens in new tab).

Publishing the cheaters' names has two purposes: to publicly shame them and to show non-cheaters that Battlestate is taking action. A spokesperson for Battlestate told Techcrunch, "We want honest players to see cheaters nicknamed." The studio intends to make this a habit, and the company already has numerous spreadsheets on its Twitter feed filled with cheaters' names. (Open in new tab)

Battlestate has strong opinions about players who use cheats in their games. It was a little over a week ago that the company's COO Nikita Buyanov took to Reddit (opens in new tab) to condemn the actions of "hackers, cheaters, and other related scum of the earth" and urged players to "report all these bastards". Of course, even if that statement was emotional, Battlestate had posted something like this before, with comments pointing out that cheaters were still ruining players' games. Perhaps Battlestate wants to convince doubters that it is serious by mounting 6,700 proverbial heads on spikes.

The community has so far viewed the move with skepticism, with a user named Epic_Tea (opens in new tab) saying, "More! Banish them all!" In the words of a player called JangoDarkSaber (open in new tab), far more players are worried that the ban is like "trying to sweep rain. One of the posts that got a lot of votes on the game's subreddit, from Battlestate, was "In other news, new account sales this weekend were record-breaking!" because cheaters bought their way back into the game. I imagine a follow-up announcement that.

In other words, if Battlestate wants to convince the community that it is serious about eradicating cheaters, it has a difficult road ahead. Still, this is not a bad approach, and there will be more than a few players scanning the public ban lists to see if the developers have personally caught one of the people being victimized. I would probably feel a little vindicated if, in the latest wave of BANs, I discovered the name of the person who miraculously managed to headshot me through a solid wall.