01/02/2023 Battlestate Games has introduced a technical client update which has “fixed the main cause of invisible players in raids”. The copy and headline of this article has been updated to reflect this.
For players trying to enjoy Battlestate Games’ extraction shooter Escape From Tarkov, it still feels like this FPS game is suffering from a case of ‘one step forward, two steps back’ – and the January 27 patch is quite concrete proof of that. Following an Escape From Tarkov update that finally patched crunch crouch walking and the game’s rampant audio issues, it looks like the infamous Escape From Tarkov invisible PMC glitch is back and it’s more disruptive than ever before. Not only this, but it looks like people can actually exploit this intentionally, which is never good. However, Battlestate Games has made a quick turn-around when it comes to solving this issue.
A few days ago, after the Escape From Tarkov patch detailed in this tweet from Battlestate Games here, players started to report a rapid resurgence of an exploit that allows Escape From Tarkov players to become invisible and silent during a raid.
A Reddit post from the aptly-named ‘EFT_Subreddit‘ on the Escape From Tarkov Subreddit (which, we know, sounds confusing), has a comment’s thread full of players sharing their experiences with invisible players in-game – both friendly and otherwise. ‘Hekto177’ has shared that they spawned in where they could “see a teammate that another teammate couldn’t” and ‘TheBigZamboni85’ has shared that they were killed by an invisible enemy while trying to extract because their duo was invisible.
If you’re looking for a more visual example of this, ‘Marcskel‘ has taken to the Escape From Tarkov forums to share the following footage:
As you can see, it certainly corroborates the other reports of completely invisible and silent players plaguing this shooter.
To make matters more interesting, EFT content creator ‘Logical Solutions‘ appears to have a logical solution for players looking to replicate this exploit – but, they’re not sharing it with anyone online (thankfully).
However, it is interesting that they are saying “people can force their PMC to be invisible almost every raid” – which would suggest that it’s an exploit and an uncontrollable bug, reading through people sharing their experiences.
Thankfully, though, as per this tweet from the official Escape From Tarkov social media account, it looks like the issue has been resolved via a downloadable update available via the launcher. Will this update really stop the issue though? Only time will tell; it might be worth waiting a little before you jump back in if you want to be sure you’ll avoid it.
While you do wait, why not read up on all the Escape From Tarkov maps and get familiar with an Escape From Tarkov ammo chart again. You never know when these things will help you out, and now is as good a time as any.