At Gamescom on Aug. 24., Dot Esports was fortunate enough to try Escape from Tarkov’s new Arena mode, and we had a blast with it. But one thing stood out more than most, as it included a highly requested fan feature that people have wanted for a while—spectator mode.
With it, you can watch your teammates from the moment you die or, in certain modes, even spectate those on the opposing teams to see their perspective and get a feel for how they play. It’s pretty amazing. The vast majority of Tarkov players at the play session lauded the feature and wanted it to come to the main game as well, but they, and you, shouldn’t get your hopes up.
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Dot had a chance to quickly talk to Nikita Buyanov, COO at Battlestate Games and Tarkov game director, about the mode, and he was quick to shoot down any chance of it going to the main Tarkov experience.
“There are no plans to add spectator mode to Tarkov,” Buyanov told Dot directly, with no hint that it is even being considered. When pressed for more, he made the reasons behind this pretty obvious.
“Again, I’m not sure about it because, literally, it can give you an advantage.” Buyanov continued. “So if you play and you have friends who watch you at the moment, it will give you additional pairs of eyes.”
Buyanov ended his point clearly, stating that “You need to experience by yourself only, not with some helpful guys from above.”
In fairness, he has a point. A team going into Tarkov would be able to converse with their friends the moment they die and give away a position of the enemy team, so the logic makes sense. Still, it sucks there isn’t something available for those who die in the game other than being booted back to the main menu and forced to wait for their friends to escape or die with them.
