Escape from Tarkov is taking extra steps to crack down on cheaters by offering players a cash bounty – in the extraction shooter’s in-game currency, anyway – for reporting ne’er-do-wells.
The popular shooter has long been waging war against cheaters, naming and shaming thousands of banned players by dropping lists of usernames as proof that “justice has been served”. Even so, cheats remain – developers Battlestate Games said they banned over 11,000 in a matter of weeks earlier this year – so the game’s creators are now introducing the bounty system.
Officially referred to in the game’s latest patch notes as “compensation for reporting players who violated game rules”, the bounty system is fairly straightforward in practice. Players who successfully report a cheater – in other words, you can’t just cash in by reporting everyone you see – will receive an amount of in-game money once the cheater is confirmed and banned.
It’s not specified how much money players will receive for their efforts, though dedicated bounty hunters will receive a combined amount for successfully reporting multiple cheaters.
The system is live now alongside latest patch 0.14.9.5, which also adds item wishlists, some tweaks to PMC and Scav AI, and the ability to play its PvE Zone mode offline. You might recall said PvE mode as being at the centre of a player backlash to a new $250 edition of Escape from Tarkov revealed in April, to which it was exclusive despite a past top-tier version of the game promising that all future DLC would be included for free. After some initial resistance, the studio later relented and allowed owners of the older Edge of Darkness bundle into the PvE mode.
