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Released into closed alpha in August 2016 and version 1.0 on November 15, 2025, Escape from Tarkov is a first person shooter published by the Russian studio Battlestate Games (BSG).
Set in a fictional region of northwestern Russia in a time roughly contemporary to ours, players step into the shoes of a former private military contractor1 abandoned in the region as it descends into lawlessness following an undisclosed disaster. Players fight against computer controlled scavengers and other players to gather loot and survive. It is known for being the “Dark Souls” of first person shooters due to its extreme difficulty and pioneered the subgenre now known as the extraction shooter.
This article is not about the merits of Escape From Tarkov as a game, any of its design principles, or its influence on the gaming industry.
This article is about Battlestate Games and their connections to groups and businesses actively participating in the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as their continued operation within Russia itself after 2014 and 2022.
They picked London for the Weather
A visit to Battlestate Games’ website reveals very little. A concise description of what the company specializes in, their flagship project in Escape from Tarkov, a link to a trailer for the game, and a contact panel.
At the bottom of the website we can find “BATTLESTATE GAMES LIMITED.”
This is a company registered in London, UK whose office address is a coworking space. We can also find that the company is registered to a Ludmila Lipskaya, whose correspondence address is another coworking space in London.
Ludmila Lipskaya2 is not the head of Battlestate Games.
The head of BSG is Nikita Buyanov. Numerous interviews have been conducted with him detailing how Escape from Tarkov is his project3 and his social media accounts openly disclose that he is the COO.
However, from a look at their annual financial statements, we can find a “Nikita Buianov”4 owed compensation for services rendered.5
This is also not a case of a Russian company operating outside of Russia with a physical office in somewhere like Cyprus or Armenia to attract international talent. Battlestate Games has a physical office in St. Petersburg, Russia that they are relatively open about.6
This can be evidenced by previous job postings on the Battlestategames.com website.
The posting specifically notes the applicant can “take part in the creation of one of the best PC games developed in the CIS,7” a physical office in the center of St. Petersburg, and assistance in relocating from another region.
Given that Battlestate Games Limited was incorporated in 2016 (despite having been in development as early as 2012) which predates the SWIFT ban against Russian banks following the full scale invasion of Ukraine but well after the Russian annexation of Crimea, a charitable read of this would be to make their product maximally palatable to westerners who would otherwise be uncomfortable paying a Russian company through Russian payment processors.
This is not the case.
Posting Through It
In February of 2016, Battlestate Games posted a short promotional video in which they visited Lobaev Arms, a Russian manufacturer of precision rifles, to take high resolution photos of their weapons to add to Escape from Tarkov and shoot some guns.
This video has been made private but the embed still appears on the Escape from Tarkov website, the title of the video can be seen at the top of the page, and you can still select the previous or next developer diary. However, a wayback machine capture as recently as April 2024 contains access to the video in question in which we can find this:
The flag in the background is a flag of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic.
Lobaev Arms does have connections to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as the company and its owner, Vladislav Lobaev, were sanctioned by the U.S. Government on February 23, 2024.
It is worth noting that Escape from Tarkov features a large assortment of meticulously reproduced guns, gun accessories, and various forms of tactical gear bearing their real life names and while this does include a large number of Western manufacturers8 like Colt, Sig Sauer, Highcom, or Crye Precision, it also includes Russian companies like the aforementioned Lobaev Arms as well as giants like Kalashnikov Concern.
Battlestate Games’ possession of licenses for these products has always been in question, simply due to the sheer number of companies who they would need to acquire licensing agreements with.
I am not familiar with Russian media licensing law but in the West, games being delisted due to the expiration of licenses is an unfortunately common occurrence. Escape from Tarkov being commercially available for almost 10 years and not suffering from any revisions to equipment names would require extremely generous and permissive licensing agreements from the companies in question. For these companies, it is very likely they are not licensing designs and simply adding them to the game because they can.9
However, for the Russian companies it is very likely there is some kind of agreement in place rather than copyright infringement. As with Lobaev Arms, Battlestate Games has posted and removed a video in which they visit Kalashnikov Concern.10 Kalashnikov was sanctioned by the US in 2014.
While not featuring in a promotional video, another firearm, the ORSIS T-5000 appears in Escape from Tarkov under that name. ORSIS is the trading name of Promtekhnologiya who were sanctioned by the US government in May of 2022. ORSIS is a manufacturer of precision rifles and the sanctions notice explicitly states that they supply weapons to the Russian military and intelligence services. ORSIS was also involved in a 2023 sanction busting operation to procure Hornady .338 ammunition for Wagner Group.
All of this could be explained by the developers being stuck between a rock and a hard place where they’re too afraid to voice opposition to the war and they’re just a bunch of gun nerds who aren’t into politics. They didn’t know what that flag was and how can you make a modern shooter set in Russia without AKs? They had to work with Kalashnikov. And when the full scale invasion started they tried to keep their heads down and distance themselves from everything.
This is yet again, not the case.
The following image is part of a teaser posted to Twitter in December 2022 for Escape from Tarkov: Arena.11
Due to the proliferation of multicam camouflage variants on the battlefield, the Armed Forces of Ukraine make frequent use of blue or yellow armbands (usually made of tape) as a form of identification, friend or foe (IFF) during combat operations.
One may argue that the yellow armband there is just coincidence but the character being given the middle finger in this promotional image is an extremely close recreation of the typical look of Ukrainian soldiers who fought in the earliest stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine dating back to 2014.
Yellow armbands and PASGT helmets (often being black due to lacking helmet covers) were ubiquitous amongst Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers12 from the earliest stages of the Russian invasion.13 The use of yellow armbands was so common amongst Ukrainian troops that in the earliest stages of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian forces made a deliberate shift toward blue armbands as Russian saboteurs were attempting infiltration by wearing yellow armbands of their own.
Worthy of note is the fact that Escape from Tarkov: Arena does use armbands for IFF but it only uses the typical video game colors of red and blue. Yellow armbands are not present in any Escape from Tarkov: Arena gamemode14 nor do they appear as an accessibility option for colorblind players.15
Some might argue that the choice of equipment is just a coincidence16 but a look through the rest of their promotional images typically showcases the contemporary “operator” look of a high cut helmet or just a balaclava and a minimalist plate carrier leaving the guy with 90s surplus as a bit of a standout.
This is a dogwhistle and very obviously one in the context of how they are aware that they have concrete connections to companies involved in the Russian war effort and have taken steps to obfuscate them.
This is not the full extent of connections Battlestate Games has to groups actively involved in the Russian invasion of Ukraine17 but at this point it should be obvious that there is enough circumstantial evidence that it ceases to be circumstance.
I’ve devoted a lot of time here to demonstrating that the developers very likely do support the Russian invasion of Ukraine but ultimately the most important aspect of why you should not purchase this game is their simple act of their continued operation within Russia.
In 2025, that has serious implications as unless they’re committing legendary acts of brazen tax evasion, they are surely paying taxes to the Russian state which is spending approximately 7.2% of their GDP, 15.5 trillion roubles, on the invasion of Ukraine in 2025 alone.
I won’t tell you how to spend your money but you should be aware of who and what it is going to.
The lore of Escape from Tarkov requires players to pick a faction. United Security (USEC) or Battle Encounter Assault Regiment (BEAR). The former is Blackwater with the serial numbers filed off, the latter is Wagner Group but (supposedly) not evil
A discussion on the Escape From Tarkov subreddit regarding Russian internet censorship following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine notes that this individual appears as the director of numerous companies operating out of the United Kingdom.
This discussion with Polygon.com in 2016 has Buyanov note that one of the studio leads is a former Spetsnaz officer. Possibly an embellishment for western audiences but not out of the question.
Different romanization scheme.
The annual report/financial statements note related party transactions for “persons considered to have significant influence over the entity.” He appears in all of their published annual financial statements.
Several locations in Escape from Tarkov are modeled after real locations in and around St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization formed of several states that previously made up the USSR. It’s current membership includes Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
For numerous legal reasons, most video games often do not feature perfect reproductions of guns and gun accessories and often utilize fictional names.
There are anecdotal claims made by people in and around the firearms or tactical gear industries in the West that they turn a blind eye to BSG’s copyright infringement as they would never successfully pursue a lawsuit in a Russian court and financially benefit anyways when fans of the game purchase the real equipment.
Unfortunately archive.org did not capture this page with the embedded video. This appears to be the video in question but it features no subtitles or English voiceover.
Escape from Tarkov: Arena is the “competitive esports ready” PvP only title connected to Escape from Tarkov, think the Call of Duty: Warzone to Call of Duty. If none of those words make sense to you, it’s a spinoff.
LB.ua is a Ukrainian online newspaper. The videographer for this video is Maks Levin, captured and murdered by the Russians in March 2022 during the Battle of Kyiv.
If you’re willing to look through some of the quote tweets and replies to that post, you’ll find a lot of very angry Ukrainians who were instantly aware of what this was because of how embedded it is in their zeitgeist.
Escape from Tarkov: Arena does not allow the player to customize any aspect of their armband. The base game does, this is not a promotional image for the base game.
Escape from Tarkov: Arena has no accessibility settings.
The astute Tarkov player may argue that the particular combination of equipment is actually “meta.” These people are being willfully obtuse.
Worthy of note is 715 Team, a Russian guntube channel that is detailed in a reddit post here. I have decided against verifying any of this information and including it in the main body of this article because I can think of numerous extremely unpleasant things I would prefer to do rather than trawl through pro-Russian Telegram channels.