Escape from Tarkov is a popular game in the streaming community and one of the many war-inspired looter shooters, and is developed by Russian studio Battlestate Games. While this may continue to be a popular game to this day, an unearthed interview from 2015 has landed the studio in hot water after one of their developers made some very caveman-like comments in regards to a woman’s role in war.
One notable exclusion from Escape from Tarkov is the ability to play as a woman, so when developer Pavel Dyatlov was asked why a female isn’t a playable option in the game by WCC Tech, Dyatlov replied “We considered that, but we came to the conclusion that women are not allowed to be in the war,”. Taking the interviewer by surprise, Dyatlov was asked why the studio had come to this conclusion, for which he replied “women can’t handle that amount of stress”.
It’s the “We considered that, but we came to the conclusion that women are not allowed to be in the war” comment that puzzles me most of all, because coming from a husband that’s seen his wife go through child birth, women handling stress goes to another level and that’s not even taking into account the 1000s of women serving in the military across the world. But even still, whether it’s the military or everyday life struggles, to suggest that anyone based upon their gender can’t handle a certain amount of stress, is an absurd amount of madness.
Naturally, in the wake of these comments, the developers at Battlestate Games released a statement in response to the controversial interview “We considered that, but we came to the conclusion that women are not allowed to be in the war,” and they added “The employee was reprimanded and properly instructed. We are sorry for caused confusion.”
However, even in the statement that was intended for damage limitation, they even stated that “we came to the conclusion that women are not allowed to be in the war”. To be honest, I’m a little lost for words.
So I believe that Battlestate Games should perhaps stick to developing and stay away from interviews, at least for now.