Battlestate Games' hardcore online shooter Escape From Tarkov hasn't reached its full PC release date yet, but the developer has already announced that it doesn't plan to include any sort of female playable characters into the game. Battlestate has stated two reasons for this decision, including the claim that it would be too much work to create female PCs, though neither of its excuses has gone over well with players who had requested this feature.
The past decade in gaming has seen this problem arise in many different game development studios, excluding female player characters due to the projected workload it would add, and this isn't even Battlestate's first time running into a controversy over it. Comments from the company made in 2016, about Escape From Tarkov's vision of war being too stressful for women and only a place for "hardened men," are now also getting negative attention.
Over Twitter, Battlestate recently responded to queries over whether or not Escape From Tarkov would get female PCs with a definitive no, writing that playable female characters wouldn't fit the "game lore," and adding that the "huge amount of work" it would take to add in extra animations and gear fitting eliminates the possibility. The game has been growing in popularity recently due to Twitch streamers broadcasting their gameplay, and the heavier spotlight led to Battlestate's female character comments from 2016 being unearthed.
The company made its announcement alongside a statement addressing those comments, tweeting that they had been said by one employee and "didn’t reflect the official position of the company." Despite its decision to exclude female player characters in Escape From Tarkov, Battlestate also wrote that it "always respected women in wars and military women."
Whether or not that--along with the company's reasoning for denying female PCs--is actually true has been called into question, however, given that Escape From Tarkov does actually have women in it. They're present as NPCs, and given that the game's main factions are military-based, it would stand to reason that women might be involved in that. Plus, it's not as though women haven't been prominent members of the Russian military for decades, and even though the game's Russia is technically fictional, its "lore" would still reflect that of the real Russia. Then there's the fact that Battlestate isn't the first company to say that adding female characters is too much work; Ubisoft famously said the same in 2014 when discussing Assassin's Creed: Unity's online mode and Far Cry 4's director said it again later that year.
In Ubisoft's case, former animator Jonathan Cooper weighed in to disagree, informing fans that adding female animations should really only take a couple of extra days of production; funnily enough, Ubisoft's next game Assassin's Creed Syndicate featured the female PC, Evie Frye. Battlestate hasn't immediately commented on its own decision, but given that the old "too much work" excuse doesn't seem to work as well these days, perhaps the company will also take a cue from those who have been in their position before.
Escape From Tarkov is available to play as a closed beta for the PC on the game's official website. Its full release date has yet to be announced.