Battlestate Games – The 80 Person Team Behind Escape from Tarkov

Recent reports confirm that Battlestate Games, creators of the hardcore FPS simulation Escape from Tarkov, now employ approximately 80 game developers working full time at their St. Petersburg studio in Russia. For a relatively young independent studio, assembling a veteran crew of this size is no small feat.

In this deep dive, we‘ll analyze Battlestate‘s build-up from scrappy underdog to a renowned studio on the cutting edge of ultra-realistic FPS games – while peering into what future growth could look like.

From Small Beginnings to 80 Strong and Counting

Founded in 2012 by CEO Nikita Buyanov, Battlestate‘s journey has been marked by methodical, self-funded growth rather than rapid unsustainable expansion. Nikita has reinvested profits smartly, slowly amassing a talented and specialized staff to match the granular development vision for EFT.

This strategy is increasingly rare in the gaming industry, where publishers and investors often pressure studios to scale too fast. For comparison, Epic Games reportedly hired around 100 new developers in 2018 alone leading up to Fortnite‘s breakout.

Battlestate‘s gradual, organically funded growth stands out – more akin to legendary developers like Valve. The patience has paid off, with unique complex innovations setting EFT apart and captivating franchise potential awaiting tap.

Here‘s an approximate timeline of Battlestate Games‘ 10 year journey towards assembling their 80 person (and growing) development team:

Who‘s Who? Battlestate‘s Development Departments

Delivering the hyper-realistic combat, health effects and granular customization Escape from Tarkov is renowned for demands specialized expertise across a wide skillset.

Here‘s a breakdown of Battlestate‘s departments, leaders, focus areas and speculated growth plans:

Game Design – 25 Current Staff

Battlestate‘s game design team focuses on overall creative direction, features roadmapping, quest implementation and crafting Tarkov‘s distinctive gameplay balance.

Senior roles like Lead Designer Nikita Buyanov himself sit in the game design department, setting the franchise vision. We can expect further hires in this team to support new map design, weapon integrations, and Tarkov‘s genre-bending fusion of FPS, RPG and simulation genres.

Software Engineering – 30 Current Staff

A world like Tarkov with sophisticated ballistics modeling, networked persistence and intricately simulated game objects pushes software engineering talent to the limits.

Battlestate‘s programming leads cut their teeth in domains like military simulators and physics engineering before joining the team. This department handles the trickiest backend integrations powering EFT‘s incredibly granular item behavior.

With plans for console ports, DirectX 12 implementation and continuing to optimize Tarkov‘s online performance, engineers represent an area primed for major hiring.

Art & Animation – 15 Current Staff

Bringing distinct Eastern European flavor and astonishing fidelity to Tarkov‘s arsenal of firearms, armors, landscapes and characters falls on BSG‘s Artists and Animators.

Hiring specializations like Technical Animators who can bridge environments and character models will assist Battlestate in interconnecting Tarkov‘s zones into a contiguous world. Continually breathing life into new assets will be a major undertaking given the team‘s content roadmap.

Production, Community Management & QA – 10 Current Staff

Overseeing the entire dev process, planning milestones and liasing with stakeholders sits firmly with Battlestate‘s producers and program managers. The scope of coordinating 80+ developers merits expanding this department.

Likewise, the team dedicates beloved community managers and customer support specialists towards maintaining their reputation for responsive, transparent interactions with EFT‘s playerbase.

Quality Assurance roles testing builds, documenting issues and assuring updates meet Battlestate‘s lofty standards will need to grow proprtionally alongside content output.

Surviving and Thriving – Challenges for the Battlestate Team

As any Tarkov player knows, between lethal A.I., intricate malfunctions and complex ammunition compatibility – staying alive in-raid is no cakewalk. Likewise besting fierce competition in Russia‘s crowded yet promising gaming scene has demanded Battlestate greatly excel across all areas.

Nikita himself has commented during early development needing to personally handle design, programming and even community interactions. This ability to adapt was vital while bootstrapping Battlestate‘s early formations.

Russia‘s burgeoning gamedev ecosystem has over 185 registered studios as of 2022 – so standing apart as an indie developer poses immense challenges locally and abroad. Though recent geopolitical events have complicated publishing processes for Russian studios, Battlestate continues holding strong on its independent path.

EFT‘s uniquely hardcore design vision demanded finding specialzed programmers, artists and animators committed to raising the bar of realism extraordinarily high even relative to milsim standards. As a result, Battlestate‘s culture values dedication, authenticity and pushing boundaries above all else.

What Does The Future Hold?

With milestones like a single unified Streets of Tarkov map and Russia 2028 spin-off title on the roadmap, Battlestate is gearing up for major new talent acquisitions. They‘ve come incredibly far already relative to their indie status, but more resources will prove necessary to fully deliver their grand ambitions.

Here‘s a sampler of new specializations and areas for team growth called out in their hiring pages that offer clues where things could be headed:

• Platform Engineers – to assist porting EFT onto consoles including optimizations, control refinement and managing expanded build requirements
• Online Programmers – continuing networked improvements as player concurrencies increase and Tarkov grows more interconnected
• DX12 Rendering Experts – to leverage newer frameworks for better multi-threaded performance
• Product Managers – assuming more publishing duties as the team scales can‘t be overstated
• Technical Animators – assist blending environment and character models together smoothly
• Level Designers – constructing lush and inspiring zones within Russia 2028‘s alternate history

Of course this is just a cross-section of roles slated to ramp up. The comprehensive needs list is doubtlessly even more substantial.

If their observed pattern of carefully expanding talent continues, estimating the Battlestate Games staff breaching 200 employees within five years seems realistic.

For now though, their detrimental talents enable Tarkov‘s uncompromising evolution – an effort we can thank the studio‘s 80 developers in St. Petersburg for, and counting.