The newfound popularity of PC game Escape From Tarkov brings with it controversy as a 2016 interview was discovered showing one of the developers stating that women can’t handle the stress of war. Escape From Tarkov first began being developed in 2012 by Russian studio Battlestate Games. The game is an action role-playing simulator that was first launched in alpha on August 4th, 2016. As of July 28th of 2017 the game has been in closed beta to anyone who purchases the title.
Escape From Tarkov is set in a fictional region of Northwest Russia called Norvinsk. The central story of the game is an armed conflict between Russian Internal Troops, UN Peacekeepers, and two separate private military companies. The game has four separate game modes that are planned for full release: PMC survival, SCAV, Offline Mode, and Player Hideout. The game has been praised for its challenging and risky combat as players are tasked with monitoring how many bullets they have and guard their loot from raiding enemies. Some reviewers have actually compared the game to Arma or Borderlands for its emphasis on shooting mechanics and looting.
In 2016 Wccftech interviewed Battlestate Games developer Pavel Dyatlov about the prospects of the game. During this interview the question of female soldiers being represented was brought up to Dyatlov and he almost immediately rejected the idea. His first response to the question was, “We considered that, but we came to the conclusion that women are not allowed to be in the war.” The interviewer corrected Dyatlov by saying that women are in fact allowed to see combat these days, but the developer did not change his stance on the issue and stated that women can’t handle the stress. Battlestate Games has since released a statement to point out that the article in question is three years old and that the company as a whole does not share the same values of just one of their developers. They went on to say that the developer in question was reprimanded for his statements, but the game still does not have female characters.
This is not the first time that Battlestate games has faced controversy for Escape From Tarkov. In 2018 the company began filing copyright infringement claims against a YouTuber for posting videos featuring its game. The YouTuber in question, Eroktic, had 47 different videos removed by YouTube because two of thoseE videos were alleged to contain misinformation after Eroktic stated that Battlestate had a data breach. Players have since accused Battlestate Games of abusing the system in order to remove videos that portray them in a negative light. For their part the studio claims to be innocent and that they were trying to stop Eroktic from slandering their game and company.
Escape From Tarkov is still in its beta stage and will be so for the foreseeable future. At the moment there has been little indication that the company plans to add female characters to the game any time soon. The company is correct in its assessment that one developer does not define the entire company’s stance on female soldiers, but after their copyright battle with Eroktic it does not help their public image. It does not aid Battlestate’s cause that this controversy takes place in a world where other video games have begun to incorporate female soldiers. Hopefully by the time that Escape From Tarkov gets a full launch gamers will be able play as any gender that they choose.
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Source: Wccftech
