In a new and somewhat bizarre post on social media, Battlestate Games’ Nikita Buyanov has asked his followers what should be done with Escape from Tarkov’s PvE platform. The contentious mode has been a point of debate since surfacing in June 2024, and Nikita hosted a poll with three options, two of which were ‘make it free’ or ‘delete it’.
The poll surfaced on social media after Nikita responded to a post from a critic who ‘refunded Escape from Tarkov’ after discovering that the PvE mode was not free and is instead a paid-for bolt-on.
And Our Survey Says…
The feedback on Nikita’s tongue-in-cheek poll is clear, and the bulk of Escape from Tarkov users either want PvE to be free or deleted entirely. At the time of publishing, 53.1% of voters (out of 17,000 votes) want PvE to be entirely free. That was supposed to be the case years ago when the concept first surfaced, but Battlestate Games went a different way with things.
The second-most popular option was ‘delete PvE’, which garnered 29.4% of the votes, assumedly from diehard PvP fans who believe that the PvE offering has long diluted what it means to be an Escape from Tarkov fan.
Nikita has been in the weeds with it recently and stressed in a new interview just a few days ago that Escape from Tarkov is his life, and he couldn’t imagine existing without the game. In our most recent episode of Access Granted, we sat down with Nikita, and he walked us through what it means to be an Escape from Tarkov developer.
Spoiler: It’s a mindset thing, and if you don’t have it, you’re not a Tarkov dev.
Escape from Tarkov’s PvE platform isn’t going anywhere. Nikita said minutes after posting the poll that it’s all a big joke to poke fun at people complaining about PvE in the first place.
If anything, Tarkov’s PvE offering is getting stronger through 2026. There are some updates planned that will even introduce a PvE mode to Escape from Tarkov: Arena, so if you want to play that game but don’t want the stress of real players, you’ll be catered to soon.
Do you play Escape from Tarkov’s PvE mode, and if so, what do you think of it? Let us know on the Insider Gaming Discord server.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that an AAA John Wick game is in development
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
