Cheating to Catch Cheaters: Results and Considerations

In the never-ending debate over just how many cheaters stalk Escape from Tarkov, content creator Joeydope decided to ditch speculation and run his own field test — one that involved crossing a line most players wouldn’t dare step over. What he found could challenge some long-held assumptions in the community.

Content creator Joeydope has recently discovered a foolproof way to lose his Escape from Tarkov account forever: running “for science” experiments with cheating software. Not only was his main account — with seven years of history and digital memories — wiped out in an instant, but now any new account he tries to create gets instantly “nuked” before even reaching the menu.

Yes, we’re talking about a hardware ban: a one-way ticket out of Tarkov. Some might say he’s finally managed to “escape” Tarkov for real… but he would have gladly avoided this kind of escape.

How It All Started

Eight months ago, Joeydope decided to put an idea to the test: finding out how widespread cheating really currently was in the game. The inspiration came from the infamous video “The Wiggle That Killed Tarkov” by creator g0at — a piece of content every EFT veteran knows — in which g0at installed and used cheats to spy on cheaters and estimate the scale of the problem. In the end, his conclusion was that in EFT about 60% of raids contain cheaters. A sensational figure, but in my view, unrealistic and based on too small a sample: just 125 raids.

Content Creator g0at

Joeydope wasn’t convinced either and decided to replicate the methodology: use a secondary account, install cheating software (going through PC protection disabling steps that, as he put it, felt like an invitation to have his digital soul stolen), and use it not to kill, but to observe players and spot suspicious behavior.

A sort of David Attenborough documentary, except instead of penguins he was tracking PMCs and scavs.

After a few initial tests, however, he shelved the project: part of the recordings had been lost, suspicious behaviors didn’t lead to solid proof, and continuing didn’t seem likely to give a truly representative picture.

The Plot Twist

On August 9, 2025, Joeydope tried to log into his main account: permabanned. He tried with a friend’s account: instant permaban before even entering the game. He created a new account: banned immediately.

That’s when he realized he’d been hit with a retroactive hardware ban, most likely tied to his experiment eight months earlier.

At that point, since the damage was done, he decided to release the video with all the results.

The Results: Surprising Numbers

In the video, Joeydope shows various raid scenes while using cheats, stating that in about 50 raids he found only one confirmed cheater and two or three suspects. That’s an estimated 2–3% of raids with cheaters — a massive difference compared to the famous 60% from g0at’s video.

Joeydope is clear: the 50-raid sample is too small to be scientifically valid. For a proper analysis, you’d need at least 300–400 raids, if not more.

While explicitly stating that he doesn’t believe g0at was lying in his video, Joeydope also points out that if his own test is scientifically invalid, so is g0at’s — given that g0at’s sample size was only about a third of what’s needed for reliable data.

Joeydope also suggests possible explanations for the gap compared to g0at’s test:

• A significant improvement in the cheating situation by BSG over the last two years (which he considers very unlikely).

• Differences in cheater presence between NA servers (used by Goat) and EU servers (used by Joeydope).

• Simple luck — or bad luck — in encountering obvious cheaters.

• Being killed before identifying them.

  
  

Why I Don't Like g0at's Take

As you might have guessed, I never liked g0at’s video and the hype it created. 125 raids are far too few to declare Tarkov overrun with cheaters. The video felt made to cause chaos and, above all, to rake in engagement — and thus monetization revenue.

Rest assured, like Joeydope, I don’t think g0at was lying — more that he framed things in an opportunistic way.

Fair play to him for seizing the opportunity, but the content seemed designed to ride on BSG’s already poor reputation and make it worse, flooding the community with toxicity, without caring about the consequences.

To the point where I almost stopped playing myself. Then I realized my reaction was to what I saw in the video, not my actual in-game experience: I was still enjoying myself, and while the problem was annoying, it wasn’t nearly as bad. At least on EU servers.

The Glass Half Full

Setting aside opinions on the two videos, there’s one thing I’m happy about: this incident proves that BSG does issue hardware bans to those who use cheats.

Until recently, many claimed this wasn’t the case because Nikita supposedly had a financial interest in keeping anti-cheat loopholes open — or even a direct profit from cheat sales. Now we know hardware bans really do happen, and the defenses are stronger than many believed.

They’re not a final solution — they can be bypassed — but they make life significantly harder for cheaters, which is the only real weapon developers have to fight a phenomenon that will never disappear entirely.

The Moral of the Story

Trying cheats can, rightly, be costly.

Whether you do it with malicious intent to gain an unfair advantage, or with more “noble” purposes — which, in my view, still don’t justify using cheats — such as studying the phenomenon or even trying to fight cheaters and protect honest players like some kind of modern-day superhero, the outcome can be the same.

The hardware ban doesn’t forgive. It can be bypassed, but it’s not as simple as buying a new copy of the game, and it might require spending money — and not just for a new EFT account.

A hardware ban is enforced by recording and storing several unique system identifiers, such as the serial numbers of the motherboard, CPU, storage drives, network card, and other hardware signatures. These values, often combined and hashed, are checked on every connection to detect login attempts from already banned systems.

Circumventing such a system would require replacing or modifying multiple components and ensuring the new data remains consistent—an operation complex enough to be far beyond the reach of most of those who can’t understand that cheating in a game is for losers and who lack the backbone to face the challenges of Escape from Tarkov.

You can find the full video by Joeydope: I have been permanently banned from Tarkov

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