Was the Escape From Tarkov Launcher Hacked?

Escape from Tarkov is riddled with cheaters and hackers from time to time, hindering the unique gameplay experience that legitimate players tune in for. While the majority of the community enjoys the challenge of Tarkov, some players prefer to cheat by using third-party software to hack and gain unfair advantages. Escape from Tarkov players were surprised to see a weird notification on the launcher. On 30th March, upon opening the Tarkov launcher, players saw an “Important” notice on the launcher. While the game notifying important updates is not uncommon, the message that was displayed was truly worrisome. This led to the community questioning ‘Was Escape from Tarkov launcher hacked?’

Here’s all you need to know about the Tarkov launcher hack incident.

Escape from Tarkov Hacked? Battlestate Games’ Response:

The Tarkov community was shocked to see an Important notice on the launcher that read, “Hack by…” followed by a couple of website links. This left players worried as they wondered if all their PCs have been compromised.

One Twitch streamer named HutchMF wrote on Twitter, “DO NOT OPEN TARKOV LAUNCHER IT BEEN HACKED AND IS UNPACKING FILES ON COMPUTER!!! DO NOT OPEN TARKOV.” 

Following this, there were a lot of threads on social media platforms including Twitter and Reddit where players raised several questions about the situation. 

One Redditor made a Public Service Announcement (PSA) post where they detailed that they received a message from the official Escape from Tarkov Discord moderators regarding the launcher. At that point, the user stated that Battlestate Games was aware of the issue and that the developers said that only the announcement box on the launcher was compromised. “The situation is being investigated and they're working on getting the text box removed and re-secured,” further said the post.

With players raising questions about the status of their PCs, Battlestate Games was quick to release a statement, reassuring players that their account data is safe. 

The developer said, “The breaking news section was attacked and the situation is currently under control. The launcher, game client, game servers, and game account data are safe and have not been affected. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

Following this, there was an update to be downloaded and players were skeptical about whether or not to trust it. On Reddit, a Battlestate Games ‘emissary’ said, “The update on the launcher is from this morning and is safe to download. Situation should be resolved now.”

However, despite the reassurance from the developers, Escape from Tarkov players are worried about potential data breach scenarios. 

One Redditor expressed their concern and said, “1000% this is what worries me ‘Oh it's just a text extension’ - right, and how do we know there wasn't any remote execution exploits on this? I am now done for this wipe while the rest of this s*** show is worked out.”

There have been multiple instances in the past where players have talked openly about how their matches have at least one cheater amongst them. Recently, Battlestate Games started sharing the list of all the cheaters it booted out of the server using its anti-cheat BattleEye.

On 27th February, the developer shared on Twitter, “We have decided to resume the practice of sharing the information about large ban waves done with the support of BattleEye anticheat. Throughout the weekend over 4,000 cheaters were banned in Escape from Tarkov.”

Following this, on 24th March, Battlestate Games announced that since 17th March more than 5700 cheaters have been banned. 

However, with hackers like in this launcher issue, the level of trust the players have in the game is very likely to take a hit unless the developers take drastic action.