Battlestate Games, the developer behind Escape from Tarkov, recently took to Twitter to publicly blast Tencent's mobile extraction shooter Arena Breakout, calling it a "blatant copycat game" and sarcastically wishing players a "wonderful 20-minute adventure" in it. But what was supposed to be a righteous act of intellectual property defense quickly turned into something nobody expected — the entire player community flipped on them.
The whole thing kicked off because Tarkov is in the middle of a catastrophic monetization meltdown. The studio rolled out a brand-new "Blue Edge" account tier priced at a jaw-dropping ~$250 USD (around ¥1,000 for Russian region keys, ¥2,000+ for EU), and locked PvE mode behind it — a feature that was originally promised to legacy "Black Edge" (old premium edition) owners. To make matters worse, players caught the devs silently editing the official website to scrub PvE from Black Edge's listed benefits.
Seeing the global outrage, Arena Breakout's official Twitter account wasted no time swooping in with what can only be described as maximum trolling: "Welcoming all homeless raiders! Today we wave goodbye to #Tarkov and welcome you to #Kamona." They even dangled 10,000 extra test slots if the post hit 5,000 retweets. This shameless poaching attempt lit a fire under Battlestate Games, who fired back with their now-infamous "copycat" tweet.
But here's where it gets spicy — the NGA forum comments went completely off-script. Instead of rallying behind their game's dev, Tarkov players sided with Tencent. One highly upvoted comment read: "Setting aside whether Tencent is being scummy, Tarkov brought this on itself." Others dug into the deeper rot: the dev studio has long been accused of deliberately tolerating cheaters because banned players simply buy new accounts — essentially treating bans as a recurring revenue stream. "They've been neglecting cheaters forever because each ban means another sale," one player explained, adding that the community has been suffering under the weight of wallhackers and aimbotters for years.
The comment section became an absolute roast session. A self-described "Black Edge sucker" wrote: "Keep at it, Tencent. Nikita had it coming." Another player lamented: "These Russians can't even monetize properly — all they know is how to piss people off." Perhaps the most savage take: "I hope Tencent clones Warships and World of Tanks too, so we never have to deal with Russian devs' BS again."
Some eagle-eyed forum users dug up old posts from 2021 discussing the obvious similarities between Arena Breakout and Tarkov, with people already wondering back then how the Russian devs would react. Three years later, the answer finally arrived — but hilariously, it came at the exact moment their own playerbase was staging a full-on revolt.
From a legal standpoint, most commenters agree that game mechanics aren't copyrightable, and Battlestate hasn't actually filed any lawsuit — their Twitter rant reads more like a frustrated emotional outburst than a calculated legal move. The real trigger? Arena Breakout is preparing to launch its PC version on Steam with reportedly impressive graphics, which poses an actual competitive threat.
The most ironic takeaway from this entire saga: when your playerbase sees a competitor coming to poach them and their reaction is to clap and hold the door open, maybe the problem isn't the competitor. As one commenter put it: "Players aren't your cash cows." And the parting shot from the thread? "Wait until they see Delta Force" — suggesting Tencent's encroachment on the extraction shooter genre is only just getting started.
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