Why everyone is leaving Escape from Tarkov

I wish I could enjoy PvE like I do real PvP Tarkov. The human element is so crucial in my opinion. There’s no game like Tarkov but it’s just so broken 50% of the time. I only have about 500 hours total and I want it to be the best it can be and I don’t think the Devs are going to do what it takes to actually get the game where it should be and that’s sad. I’m still playing and still always in full Raids but it’s not as crazy as it used to be.

Lol every wipe there's some kind of controversy or issues where everyone "agrees" to "boycott" the game for good. Then all those people come back 2 months later. Go look at all the streamers who said they were done for good after the Unheard fiasco. Look how long that lasted

You’re not alone in this. You echo a lot of what people think and feel rn

Tarkov player base isn’t going anywhere. All these other extraction shooters have tried and failed.

The game is falling because of hackers.

Because its the same since 2015? people get bored yk

I think the BIG things what make tarkov good in 2019/2020 is that players never play it before.
I think this is simple as.
This game is insane.

Your analysis is extremely compelling and I agree with it. It seems you did not mention the issues that compelled me to stop playing in Dec 2021: cheaters and terrible audio.

But I want to comment in a totally different direction:

Tarkov players should start considering the bigger picture. Russia’s economic situation is deteriorating, and it may have real consequences for Escape from Tarkov and the team at BSG.

Here’s the current economic context:

13.9% inflation and a 23% key interest rate, with mortgage rates soaring to 28% (some requiring 50% down).
2.4% unemployment sounds low, but it reflects severe labor shortages, even in arms manufacturing.
The ruble has fallen below 1 per 100 USD, and there’s been a 25% drop in the National Wealth Fund over the past year.
Corporate bankruptcies are on the rise, driven by sanctions and crippling interest rates.
GDP growth, where it exists, is almost entirely based on defense spending, which is unsustainable.

Even these figures need to be viewed cautiously, as there are valid concerns about transparency and accuracy in Russia's official reporting.

All of this could spell trouble for Tarkov's future in 2025 or 2026. I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen—nobody wants to see BSG or the hardworking developers suffer from forces beyond their control. However, it’s a reality worth preparing for, particularly if your livelihood or significant time investment depends on Tarkov.

I know this kind of perspective might not be welcomed by everyone, but it feels important to acknowledge. I’d rather raise caution now than see a worst-case scenario take people by surprise.

People are leaving tarkov simple the unknowingly is gone. Everyone knows pocket watch kappa so on and so on. Tarkov was so different in the beginning but now its the same and never grew that special feeling is gone. Its not the cheaters its not the unrewarding system its not "superfun" stuff nah its that aura is gone.

Also general sam didnt teach anyone how to rat thats a reach. People been camping ratting since cs, halo, cod, you name a game and theyre rats there.

Spot on the money covered everything

Hot take, but i think tarkov isnt realistic enough. I used to play spt with realism mod. No kidding made the game make sense. The fact that a mosin with 7.62x51r sp round looses to a AP6.3 is insane. But in spt any bot can kill you given a good enough caliber and tagillas helmet wont absorb 3 "low pen" sniper rounds from point blank range. Also changing the armor ratings, no real face shield will shield off 7.62x39 rounds. And making things rare, like in spt i had a mod that cooked the market. But the market was individual. What does that mean. Traders have a random nimber of each item. So you cant just buy everything you want. Stiff is scarce. What does that mean getting high pen ammo will be a mag at max, good armor forget about it since most bullets penetrate. And guns are sold from traders eith slight damage. Gameplay became calculated, and difficult, strategic. Not a run and gun game

Too many cheaters

Excellent micro-documentary. Really appreciate the effort and willingness to provide insight into what's been going on with this game.

i'm a player who's account was made march 17, 2017 - i can say honestly my reasoning and opinions for why tarkov is dead/feels dead are mostly performance related, adding in extra hitboxes that are buggy and feel really bad to run into (neck, armpit pre-work, etc), "milsimmer" changes getting added by request of people who don't play (inertia, weight restrictions, etc), and the recent match maker update that made a pretty obvious impact on matches..
The game hasn't really improved in a long time, and has been just about adding content while also adding things to punish players for next to no reason - mix in cheaters, netcode issues, etc and people are obviously going to play SPT or PVE given the choice. Add in things like community toxicity typically towards people who have different opinions than the masses, or simply speak out against desicions within logical reason - there's a -whole-nother reason alot of people leave/feel pushed out. For me, i was once a top #15 for pmc kills player, and to put it nicely - i'm fed up and disappointed but still enjoy the concept of the game. I'm tired of playing against people at max ping, and cheaters - even though i can kill both pretty regularly i'm tired of dealing with it wipe after wipe just to get a couple new guns, a map expansion, and next to nothing else.

Personally, if it wasn't for PVE and being able to play with friends who are still new, i probably would play SPT or just not at all.

PvE is a snooze fest😴
Get good, nerds.

- From a 30 y/o Husband with a Full Time Job.

Oh, jeez ... I have been here from the start of the beta and let me tell you... Everybody is leaving before wipe, everytime... Just try to make the same video in a month (the wipe should be around 1.1.25)

You forgot the number one problem cheaters. With in a month of playing game I got 4 cheater banned

After finding out my money went to fund the russian army instead of the game, I pretty much quit it forever.

it's not, we had it long time coming,
"yeah lets do hard event in the middle of the week that no person with a job could finish".
I swear it feels like they made this game for streamers only

It's been out for too long, people just move to next game. Loading times and lack of optimization killed it for me. One time after work I wanted to play but sitting there 7min waiting for players.. I just don't have that much time to game just to sit up to 10 min just to get in game, to get killed in bad spawn in first 40 sec

When I tried it years back. Going night time with night goggles with a pistol and a suppressor. Really fun gameplay!

You sounds a hater. 😂

This game has a bizarre learning curve. When you start out you think it's just because you're new and everyone's better than you, but by 1000 hours you realise that at least 51% of the time you died because of shitty audio, networking, rendering, rng or hacking.

Inertia makes no sense what so ever. The way the implented it is dogshit. Why don't have the Goons, Guards, Bosses or let alone a simple AI Scav have Inertia implented?

cheaters killed tarkov, thats really the long and short of it from my perspective. ive been playing since january 2018, have around 4k hours or so, have almost always played as a duo with a friend and now we just play PVE because its still rewarding to play without there ever being the feeling you died to a cheater. There are still occasionally cheap deaths ofcourse, the AI being the AI and all that but cheap deaths are so much easier to swallow than cheat deaths. I dont think we will ever return to PVP.

on top of all this 9/10 its completely uninteresting to the average gamer. the whole being a scav and having to inspect every persons outfit to figure out if i can shoot them or not is what kills it for me. then if i mess up or lets say i only saw their head and they shot at me first, i then get penalized because I "messed up" by not inspecting someones clothes. how did they ever think that would be enjoyable in the least is baffling. the game is utterly unenjoyable outside of EXTREMELY rare moments thats why no one wants to play it. im sorry i dont wanna peep someones drip if i wanted to look at clothes all day id be at fucking kohls

Other titles don't compare and don't deliver the same that Tarkov does for me. It's watered down.

I'm more surprised Tarkov has continued for this long, rather than it's going down now? Is this video click bait?

The game used to be fun because it was simply more simple.

I miss the game being easy for people who didn't have time to grind. I miss the ironman meta of running around with altyns, rys-ts, hexgrids, slicks. Armor pen, flea being op, loot pools being op spawn rates, and the lack of random bullshit needed from labs to craft in the hide out. I also really miss the way marked keys used to work. Game was so much more entertaining when you got these little floods of dopamine hits throughout. I have bias because I've always liked the OP aspect of games and nerfing/buffing I've never preferred a game to nerf something as long as it's open to all players. But yeah that's how I feel. I wish rather than changing so much of the core gameplay, worked on optimizing their game to their best ability wipe to wipe because every wipe added more optimization issues till I had to literally build an entire new pc to load into reserves... Yeah reserves.

-No one wants to play late wipe, literally just nothing to do there aside from the boring events
-The cheater stigma has basically tanked the games reputation (everyone was complaining about it, i.e GOAT's video)
-No one wants to pay for a $250 game, let alone play a game that already costs enough which only tanks the devs and the games reputation more
-The tasks fucking suck and are just a chore.
-Horribly optimised, can't even get above 40 fps in the middle of Streets of Tarkov. (Like fuck me, when a games recommend RAM is 32gb you know its gonna lag to shit)
-Everyone leaves and just waits till next wipe to play, waiting for the game to become fun again.
-Those who really love PVP left and went to Arena
-Those who really hate PVP (or just suck at the game, you know who you are.) left and went to play PVE
-Everyone is playing other games waiting for wipe to come or have just left entirely due to said other game being way more fun and enjoyable than Tarkov.
-Legit nothing else fun other than the game loop of: Go into Raid > Kill shit or Do shit for Quests > Go back to stash/If dead, go back to square one > Sell shit and Turn shit in and accept new quests. And do this again for the next 2 weeks until max traders or whenever the game gets stale and boring toward end or mid wipe.

what made me leave is making labs keycards have a limit

tarkov failed cuz if there was something enjoyable, they decided to nerf. like all the things you said, dont forget painkillers, keys, fast throw granades, armors, leaning. istead of fix the game, like desync, audio, they concentrate to nerf things. and i dont wanna talk about cheaters. I left tarkov this wipe after 20 raids, i played the game since late 2018. rip

weight is super necessary however everything else, they just fucked up. its a shame there is absolutely no game like tarkov, and is nothing that could ever come close no matter how much people wanna cope by playing arena breakout or whatever that bag of shit is called. RIP Tarkov

How you even not talk about the biggest Point and that’s cheating????? Thumbs down

Im just coming back to tarkov and its still very fun yall r just negative

tarkov was fun in 2017-2019 , I miss those days , same honestly with pub g too , they are so fun till they become popular and the hackers come in

Why tf would i put any effort into grinding for loot when the best loot spots are camped and vacuumed by streamers and sweats, if i get anything good worth extracting with its almost always guaranteed death by a hacker who can see my inventory or an extract camper, or death to the fucking bosses and goons because i dont have 40 hours a week to learn how to counter them. On top of that if you dont have the best internet good luck winning any fights with shit desync. Not even lag, you just cant react because someone else can kill you before you even know they peaked the corner.

Release tarkov classic

I mean there is a reason why optimization and cheaters come up all the time cause it feels like nothing is progressing with those fields at the very least not in a meaningful way. Seeing the game go more rat and rewarding crouching down and sitting still the moment you hear someone does not help either.

so in many ppl opinions mine included the "fixes" never comes the game gets slower and more boring every wipe and the true endgame has not showed up so you just get left with nothing to do, I just prefer the scrappy early game but when you go in every raid with zero thought for what your loadout is worth cause you have gazzilion of rubles it's no longer fun.

Nerf audio range,inertia etc...
take actual time and to properly optimize what you can, it's possibel SPT has shown that. And for the love of god region lock china, yes I know there's cheaters in all regions but I have had enough with Xaiomeng frankly.

the simple answer is cheaters. very rewarding game, i would play everyday, but the wiggle video kills the game for everyone. i stopped playing because there is no value to grinding against cheaters

having a separate (wipe) and (non wipe) server list ,custom ,modded and non custom servers would help alleviate this issue

I've left after Unheard edition debacle..., just could not trust them any more to invest my time in..., Hunt Showdown can scratch that extraction itch for now...

if i go full chad with a decent run on something like streets, full loot in bag, id be happy if i even payed for the gear i brought out, 1 chad gearset is like a mil depending on the weapon you bring, am not talking .338 or some shit like that, am just talking a 5.45 caliber weapon, fuck, the ammo itself is like 300k, assuming u spend like half of it in a raid you are already -150k (was a couple of months since i played so i may have gotten that way low or way high) but my point stands.

I just stop playing extract shooter u said it after a few weeks it just feel "bleugh". Personally ive started playing games like Stalker 2/ Gamma or project zomboid b42 since i dont have to deal with hackers or rats

Alternative title: The Tarkiv Situation is insane

The Unheard edition is the sole reason i stopped playing. If it wasn't for it i would still be playing till this day

Tarkov was the best game ive ever played during those years.

Honestly I think it was just NEW in 2019 there was no other game like it that was what drew people in.