Escape from Tarkov dev Battlestate will clamp down on real world trading

Escape from Tarkov developer Battlestate Games wants to clamp down on those players using the game to make a real-world profit. 

The online multiplayer title is currently available in beta form, and asks players to venture into a hostile wasteland to gather valuable loot from sealed areas. The catch is that other players can engage them along the way, potentially stealing their belongings. 

Retrieved loot can then be sold to in-game traders, but some users have been selling their rare and expensive wares outside of the game in exchange for actual cash, which is a cause for concern for other players and Battlestate itself. 

Explaining how the studio intends to handle real-money trader and cheaters in a Reddit post, COO Nikita Buyanov said the team will ban anybody caught buying or selling in-game items for real-world cash, and is working on a number of other countermeasures designed to curb the practice. 

According to Buyanov, the studio's BattlEye anti-cheat system has helped it catch and ban almost 10,000 cheaters so far, and it is currently looking at how to implement other punishments such as instakicks and instabans.

Two-factor SMS account verification is also being worked on, and will hopefully make life a "little harder" for hackers, while Battlestate is exploring the possibility of partially banning VPN services to prevent users from getting around region locks.