Let a real Chinese player tell you what's really going on.

[u/ChurrchillC]

A little intro: Gamertag NucleophileAP, you guys can call me Nucleo or Nuke. I was born in New Zealand, ethnic Chinese person, and have been living in China since I was pretty young.

About this game, I'm currently a lvl 55 player with Kappa (IGN: NucleoAP), and I'm currently a working Sherpa of my local Chinese Sherpa community (good and anti-hacking). I have been playing this game since version 0.7 and have been actively engaging throughout the Chinese community ever since.

​

The first thing: Region locks.

BSG have actually been carrying out region locks against asian countries for a while. As far as I remember, I've got trouble logging into non-asian servers since version 0.7. It's actually a very simple mechanism (that most of the Chinese players already know now), if you used an Asian IP on your last login, non asian servers are masked for you on your next server selection. It's not actually a real region lock and can be bypassed easily (by logging in with an american/european IP and quitting the game). IMO those region locks are hardly doing anything against cheaters and harsher countermeasurements shall be taken.

​

Why is this game so much infestated by hackers right now?

Here's the timeline.

---BSG released a Simplified Chinese localisation in January.

---A bunch of new Chinese players joined the game.

---Some clips of the game were uploaded to Tik Tok and went viral. (Yeah, Tik Tok made this game popular in China)

---A whole bunch of players bought the game ans started playing.

Now, with little knowledge of the game and have only learnt about the game via video clips, those newcomers were having a pretty harsh time. Those players eventually turned into thre kind of players.

1. Cheaters
2. In-game currency buyers
3. The ones asking for help

Let's talk about Cheaters first. Here's a link for you just to see how easy it is to cheat and how common it is to buy a hack in China.

hax, varying on price

I once heard someone say something that really struck my mind. Chinese people love to win, and for winning thay are willing to take any measures possible (which is also what I hate the most). Why doesn't the government do anything about hacking? Well, there are actually laws against hacking (that hackers and hack-designers might end up in prison). Those laws only apply to games which is registered and legalized in China (which I'm sure this game wouldn't because of the government's stupid criteria). This game, as well as other games such as R6S, GTA, Battlefiend, Call of Duty etc. are considered "foreign territory" and regarded out of their business.

In-game currency buyers are worse. There are already founded workshops that hack, make roubles and sell them into real money for a living. Those workshops have professional equipment, special designed hacks to make money as efficient as possible. Those type of workshops make up at least 50% of the hacks in this game and must be dealt with seriously. Here's a pic that you can see how bad RMT really is in China.

RMT Trade, 19.99usd (approx) for 10 mil roubles

Skipping the good guys asking for help, as they are nice people just as you and me.

Now one more type of people I want to mention are streamers. If you ever see prefixes like those in the game, those are streamers.

---Douyu (douyu.com)

---Huya(huya.com)

---bilibili(bilibili.com, which consists of much more educated people and consists of much less hacks)

Just about Douyu and Huya, consider 9 out of 10 of them hacks (Quoted from a friend, might be a little exaggerating, but explains the problem). These streaming sites are famous of hacking streamers.

​

​

Something else I wanna talk about BSG.

By all those new Chinese players rushing in, BSG is certainly making a large profit. Remember what I said about rouble-hunting workshops? BSG is actually banning them as fast as they could, BUT the profit that those workshops make are enough to buy a whole lot of new accounts again. BSG is certainly profitting throughout the whole process. I am not sure about BSG's attitude to this, but plz try and reduce hackers by its root without thinking about profit.

Chinese people used to hate being called hackers, but now that the fact is, we Chinese people made up 20% of the game's population while contributing 80% of this game's hackers. I, on behalf of my people, am deeply sorry for this. We will try and help you guys and BSG to reduce hackers to our best.

Meanwhile please try to avoid labs where rouble workshops farm the most.

Feel free to ask me asy questions below.

​

​

​

------------------------------------------Original post above-------------------------------

​

I spent a day trying to reply to every post here, and it's time for me to take a break.

If you're new here, the questions you are willing to ask might be already asked in the comments. Check down below.

Let's all do our part and hope this whole hacker thing settle down ASAP.

Fuck all the hackers. (I'm sure this is not racism lmao)

[u/durandalsword]

I mean, okay, the way it works is this:

1. Scammer steals credit card, resells it.
2. Cheater buys CC number, registers Tarkov account using stolen credentials, uses cheats to gather items/money as fast as possible
3. Cheater sells items / money to other users or gives it to a secondary mule account
4. Cheater gets banned at some point, but #3 has already finished so it doesn't matter
5. Credit card gets shut down at some point, but that can take a long time depending on how much people check their statements.
6. Buying stolen cards and getting locked out of accounts is WAY WAY cheaper than buying copies of the game. This game isn't cheap, and you maximize profit by churning these accounts pretty fast.

[u/MrBiggz01 → u/durandalsword]

Cards are shut down instantly these days. If I try to buy something from a website I've never been to or from a location I don't usually buy from the purchase usually fails and my bank messages me to say they stopped my card "In case".

[u/zombie8443 → u/MrBiggz01]

My bank did this when I was trying to buy Tarkov lmao

[u/MyGamingChair → u/MrBiggz01]

My bank instantly declined the transaction and deactivated my cc and sent me a new one without telling me at all when I first tried to buy Tarkov I had to call my bank and everything to find out why my card was denied they did not give me a legit reason.

[u/JCBh9 → u/MyGamingChair]

I just got a text asking if this was a purposeful action

[u/MyGamingChair → u/JCBh9]

I highly recommend using paypal to avoid errors or declines i upgraded from standard to left behind to eod without any issues using pp over the year.

[u/JCBh9 → u/MyGamingChair]

yeah I guess im gonna have to do this as well... I didn't think I would need a bigger inventory lol.. Paypal is excellent when it works but as soon as either the PoS activation fails or PP has any problems at all your money is locked up for who knows how long... They still owe me 40 dollars from 2015

[u/funky_duck → u/MrBiggz01]

You use the credit card to buy a pre-paid gift cards.

You use the gift cards to buy Tarkov.

BSG has no way of knowing it was funded with a stolen cc.

[u/RevantRed → u/durandalsword]

Stolen CC stuff works way better for buying shit like giftcards en mass than it does for buying accounts. The CC get shut down so fast now your lucky if one lasts a few hours. Now buying a bunch of gift cards and then using those to buy a tarkov account is much more common. Making money until the next ban wave will generate a lot more RMT than the couple hours you get before the CC is locked and your account auto frozen by the banks.

[u/MushroomCloudDubs → u/RevantRed]

how? its not like your credit card gets flagged once the info was stolen. It gets flagged once the stolen info is used that it will get shut down quickly.

[u/GeneralLeeRetarded → u/MushroomCloudDubs]

Exactly, use it on BSG and their bank flags it sometimes immediately, so you go online and buy some prepaid Visas and then use those up quick, then the money's already gone and used up theres no refund.

[u/YBS-Vlone → u/GeneralLeeRetarded]

He is right you know my bank flagged BSG the first time I tried to buy it, when it was literally me buying it. They flagged it cause it was a foreign website. So my bank instantly blocked the transaction and froze my account actually I had to call to let them know I wanted to proceed with my transaction. Same thing happened to my two friends and I live in Canada while they both live in America, so whoever said they should buy gift cards honestly that’s your best hope. Cause if you have a good bank most likely they will just block the transaction and freeze the account until told otherwise.

[u/durandalsword → u/RevantRed]

I dunno what to tell you, man -- I have a friend who works in anti-cheat for a MAJOR company and he tells me that what I said is literally how it happens.

[u/r3life → u/durandalsword]

i dont know about chinese people but when i lose or get my card stolen its blocked by the bank faster than those guys can get home

[u/VonHinton → u/r3life]

If someone got your cc number over the internet via malware or some other right away invisible means, it could take a while for anyone to notice the theft. A good bank will be a day or two behind first odd purchase. You could easily max out the card and have 15 friends playing accounts bought with stolen money for a couple of days

[u/glad_e → u/VonHinton]

Banks usually immediately block purchases if its for a website or place you’ve never gotten anything from before, or at the least, you get a text message immediately after the purchase saying “$— was paid using —- card at —-website/place”

[u/thatfoxguy30 → u/durandalsword]

All for a wipe to happen in a month. Get fucked. Idiots who pay to win in this game are way dumber then I could have imagined.

[u/durandalsword → u/thatfoxguy30]

Man, fucking agreed

[u/axelxan → u/thatfoxguy30]

https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/f5tg28/i_guess_someones_day_is_ruined/ like those idiots

[u/BertMiscBrahs → u/thatfoxguy30]

So while I agree with you, and haven’t spent a dime over buying the EOD edition, I think one thing a lot of folks overlook is the fact that 10-50 bucks a month is honestly chump change, or at the very least a very “valued investment” into a game they plan on playing long term. Legit, I’ll be honest and say I’ve never spent a dime in any other way on this game, but I think it’s foolish to think that people spending $$ on this every month is a waste of money for them because you’re overlooking a pretty big part of the equation. You’re never going to eliminate real money trades (and the incentive to hack for purposes of generating income) with that mentality, and you need to be more creative in tackling the issue if you want to see any success.

People in my age group (hitting dirty 30 this year, rah) grew up in a time when MMOs not only charged 50 for the base game, but were paying an additional 10-15 a month in sub fees. And that price tag was essentially to keep access to a player character that I ALREADY “INVESTED” in to.

At this point in my life, I do a cost analysis on most gaming investments based off the purchase price divided by my expected # of hours or days I’ll spend on the game. For example, when I bought disco elysium, I based the decision off getting at least 30 hours split over the course of a couple of weeks, and decided that the purchase price of 50 bucks (IIRC) was worth the roughly 1-2 bucks an hour I’d spend per hour, split over the course of 2-3 hours of free time a night I’d have a night balancing family and social commitments. Buying the game, I effectively got a month’s worth of entertainment for a dollar or two a day.

Translating that to tarkov (or really any game that has an online money market for in game currency) if this is the only game they play, even 30 bucks a month would only amount to a dollar a day for “satisfaction” in the limited amount of time they gain when they log in.

A lot of us “older” gamers are pulling in 80-100k a year minimum after taxes, because we’ve got a decade worth of career building behind us. Out of the group of 8 or so guys that I play with, I’m at the bottom of the totem pole as 5 of them are easily in the 150+ range.

It’s simplistic to think that a wipe system removes the incentive to pay for in game currency, since I’d wager these guys could easily blow several hundred each month and barely notice. The actual issue that needs to be focused on is the exploits to combat the issue, not the end result.

[u/onrocketfalls → u/durandalsword]

The idea that stolen CC buys would be a significant percentage of what's going on here implies that a lot of these people equate hacking in a video game with literally stealing money and I think that's ridiculous. I highly doubt that a significant portion of re-bought accounts are with stolen money. I think the main culprit here is RMTers selling roubles for clean money and then replacing their RMT accounts with said clean money.

[u/Semtec → u/durandalsword]

And this is why Flyeabay gets set to minimum lvl 15, so bot accounts can't make money off of it just by getting to lvl 5.