Nikita Buyanov, the public face of Battlestate Games, reflected on ten years of Escape from Tarkov in an interview with GamesRadar. The game officially left early access in November 2025 after a decade of development, and Buyanov framed that run as a long, exhausting push to get a very complicated title into players’ hands.
It’s super-hard to make this game playable. I think it’s a miracle that we’ve made it playable with this level of complexity.
Buyanov stressed that Tarkov was never intended to please everyone. He described the project as equal parts game and social experiment and said he feels a personal obligation to be its public leader.
I feel like it’s my duty to be right on the front. I think it’s a good thing for Battlestate. They see that I am the lead officer, the tip of the spear. We made the game to get people together. But then they fight. They play to let the pressure out, to hate the game and to hate me. That maybe is the essence of Tarkov. It’s not a gaming project. It’s not something for fun. It’s a social project which combines all of that.
Buyanov also touched on the long struggle with cheaters and the technical challenge of an extraction shooter with deep systems. Battlestate Games now employs more than 400 developers, but Buyanov remains the studio’s most visible figure and one who says the project has consumed his life over the last decade.
Escape from Tarkov is widely credited with shaping the extraction shooter genre and has influenced later titles. For readers who remember recent Tarkov tie-ins, the site covered a limited-time code that briefly let players add Buyanov’s voice as an in-game PMC line earlier in December 2025, which promo is detailed here.
Buyanov’s comments show how much of the last ten years was spent on technical work and persistence, not headline features or marketing. The interview frames the full release in November 2025 as the endpoint of a long, often personal struggle to ship a playable, complex experience.
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Escape from Tarkov
Developed by Battlestate Games
