Ever since oneEscape From Tarkovplayer publicly revealed their findings that up to 60% ofTarkovmatches might play host to cheaters, the community has taken a more negative stance towards the developer, Battlestate Games. Now, Battlestate Games has announced that its more focused and hecticEscape From Tarkov: Arenatitle will be coming out sometime in December 2023, and the players are highly suspicious of this claim.
The news broke whenForbes covered a recent interviewwith the Battlestate Games CEO, Nikita Buyanov, stating that “Early December is a good period of time that we want to release [Arena].” This soon made its way onto the r/pcgaming subreddit, whereTarkovplayers flocked to share their takes on what’s actually bound to happen withArena.
What to make of Escape From Tarkov: Arena?
“For anyone uninitiated,” saidReddit user bauN7, “Battle State Games has been late on every single timeline they’ve ever given for Tarkov. Literally every. Single. One.” Aside from the matters of release date windows, the players are also cynical about the value thatArenamay or may not be adding toTarkovas a whole.
The situation is similarly dire on the officialTarkovsubreddit, where players are admittedly being more technical in their critique at least.TheJigglyfat highlighted a situationin whichTarkov‘s emblematic desync issues caused massive differences between what two different players were seeing, which means that the match was effectively decided by lag live on stream.
It’s not a great look, then, but the community’s jadedness isn’t necessarily a sign that BSG will have trouble managingArenaas well. In the end, if push comes to shove, at leastthe single-player offline version ofTarkovseems to be prospering well enough.
