Russian Escape From Tarkov topped the Twitch top all New Year's holidays
At the end of 2019, Escape From Tarkov took over the top of the most popular games on Twitch. The success was followed by a scandal. What the developer did right and what is wrong — we tell in the squeeze with Polygon.
About the game
Almost three years ago, Escape From Tarkov from the Russian Battlestate Games entered the closed beta. This is a hardcore tactical first-person shooter. Its main features, according to Polygon:
- emphasis on ballistics. The probability of bullet penetration and ricochets matter here;
- modern military equipment. The game features bulletproof vests and bulletproof helmets. The damage varies depending on the hit to different parts of the body. Getting hit in the head or in the body is most often fatal, so equipment is a really important tactical element;
- the ability to replace any component of the weapon up to the trigger, thereby improving it.
According to Polygon, Escape From Tarkov resembles a Call of Duty series. But its multi-level tactical system refers to Rainbow Six Siege and Sniper Elite 4.
The game also has elements of survivalists. Here the player must get food and water and acquire special skills for survival.
About success on Twitch
This is not the first time Escape From Tarkov has become popular on a streaming resource. At the beginning of 2018, the project entered the top 5 games with the largest number of Twitch viewers, pushing PUBG and Overwatch.
But at the end of December 2019, the Russian title got the first place in the top and left behind even League of Legends and Fortnite. There are two reasons: a new patch and a new campaign to promote the game.
What has changed in the game:
- Battlestate has added a new large map, a game shelter and a number of other innovations;
- The game has also moved to the latest version of Unity. This is important because the studio plans to finally improve the performance of servers and network response time. Players often complain about lags and crazy ping, which causes characters to “teleport”.
How the game’s advertising campaign went:
- the developer used a Twitch tool called Drops. It allows you to get loot for watching streams of the game. This led to a rapid increase in the popularity of Escape From Tarkov on the service.
It’s hard to say exactly how many copies of Escape From Tarkov the developers have sold all the time. The game is not available on Steam or on other distribution platforms. It is distributed through the developer’s website with hidden statistics. Therefore, it is not known how the promotion campaign affected sales.
About reputational problems
But while Escape From Tarkov was conquering Twitch, its developer got involved in another scandal.
On December 30, Battlestate’s Twitch channel was blocked. One of the developers on the air pointed a combat pistol (discharged) at his head and pulled the trigger. The service quickly responded to user complaints. The channel with 700 thousand subscribers is not available at the moment.
Before that, Battlestate was blamed for two more episodes.
The Western community criticized Battlestate for sexism. Back in 2016, she refused to add female protagonists to the game, saying that it was “a game only for harsh men.” Recently, the developer apologized and acknowledged the role of women in modern and historical conflicts. But he refused to add female characters again: too laborious work, according to him.
In addition, a few years ago, the studio was caught in the misuse of the DMCA claims system against YouTube users. Battlestate claimed to have blocked one user for “misinformation”, but dozens more cases were discovered.
However, the reputation of the developer did not affect the success of Escape From Tarkov on Twitch. The project is still in the top 5 most viewed games. Battlestate probably expects to earn enough on this to increase the performance of the title and move to the open beta. Especially since the players have been asking for this for years.
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