Escape from Tarkov creator gives terrible excuse for not including playable female characters

We’re in a brand-new decade, but that hasn’t stopped some video game developers from falling back on inexcusable explanations for why you can’t play as female characters in certain games. This time, it’s courtesy of Escape from Tarkov creator Battlestate Games, which offered two convenient excuses for why — despite the requests of many players — it will not let you play as a female character in its ultra-realistic military survival sim.

Excuse number one is that, as the Russian-based developer explained on Twitter, playable female characters can’t be included “because of game lore.” It’s not exactly clear what that means, but Battlestate seems to be suggesting that its game, which is set in a fictional region of Russia and features an armed conflict between fictional private military companies, doesn’t have a narrative that supports female combatants.

That’s despite the insurmountable narrative evidence of female characters who are present in pretty much every piece of post-apocalyptic fiction ever made — because, you know, women exist — and in basically every other military survival sim and battle royale shooter on the market.

Excuse number two is a bit more forthright: “there will be no playable female characters because of... the huge amount of work needed with animations, gear fitting etc.”

The developer is getting predictably eviscerated on social media, especially considering its previous tweet seemed to suggest it had no problem animating in non-playable female characters for storyline quests, thus undermining its “lore” excuse.

It’s also curious that Battlestate is only responding to the idea now because a three-year-old interview with an employee of the development team had been recirculating online in which the employee insisted women couldn’t cut it in the high-tension environment of Tarkov. “We came to the conclusion that women can’t handle that amount of stress,” Battlestate dev Pavel Dyatlov said at the time. “There’s only place for hardened men in this place.” Battlestate has since said the employee was “reprimanded and properly instructed,” presumably only in how to talk to the press.

Battlestate’s response here is not a new one. Nearly a decade ago, developers were making the same exact excuses, most notably back in 2014 when Ubisoft creative director Alex Amancio said Assassin’s Creed Unity wouldn’t feature female playable characters in its four-player co-op mode because it would add “a lot of extra production work.” Of course, future Assassin’s Creed games — including Syndicate, which was released a year later — featured female protagonists. This was conveniently after former Ubisoft animator Jonathan Cooper chimed in amid the controversy in June 2014 to say it would take “a day or two’s work” to add playable female models.

Series like Gears of War, once a testosterone-fueled military series, just released its fifth installment with a playable female main character. Even games like Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, a game that, like Escape from Tarkov, launched in early access and also remained plagued by bugs and technical issues for months on end, had the resources and insight to include playable female characters from the beginning. It’s also worth noting that Battlefield developer EA DICE had to vigorously fight its own fan base to include playable female soldiers in 2018’s Battlefield V, despite the historical evidence supporting it.

Although it shouldn’t need to be said, women have been able to participate in active military service — yes, even in Russia — for decades now. Perhaps Battlestate should take a few immersion cues from the real-world history of planet Earth; here’s a Wikipedia page to start.