As Escape From Tarkov reels from its $250 edition backlash, the single-player mod SPT-AKI enjoys its time in the sun

It wasn’t that long ago that Escape From Tarkov dealt with a humongous cheating problem that may or may not have been dealt with. Yet, here goes a new problem: the $250 non-DLC that allows players to enjoy co-op PvE. For the single-player mod SPT-AKI, though, this is good news.

Notably, as the developer Battlestate Games is struggling to make amends with its community, a substantial number of people have decided to give the third-party offline SPT-AKI mod a chance, instead. So many of them, in fact, that the SPT-AKI website crumbled under the influx of visitors and didn’t go back up until the development team set up an emergency download page for the mod. “You killed our site,” says the announcement,” so now you get a basic-ass page.” It works remarkably well, though, and even provides valuable links to some of the community’s favorite mods and tweaks for SPT-AKI, such as the surprisingly life-like SAIN bot rework.

Single-player Tarkov mod SPT-AKI is so popular now that the developer had to simplify its website

As Battlestate Games is in a tough situation following the Unheard edition fiasco, those who are eager to play Tarkov offline chose to turn the other way. Specifically, the way that doesn’t cost them hundreds of dollars just to play without other players getting in their way. The number of players doing that, specifically, is so substantial that SPT-AKI’s website went up in flames until the stripped-down emergency version could be pushed live.

The thing about SPT-AKI is that, up until Escape From Tarkov‘s $250 Unheard edition and its PvE co-op mode, it wasn’t a competitor to Tarkov proper in any meaningful way. In fact, SPT-AKI specifically cannot be played in multiplayer in any way, shape, or form, and the mod checks if the player has the official version of Tarkov installed on their PC before being able to play.

Battlestate Games has never been too keen on the existence of third-party mods for Tarkov, though one of the things the team promised following the recent community outburst is that the official build of the game would support mods after its 1.0 build came out.

The latest update on the matter, actually, is that Battlestate Games will leave SPT-AKI alone for the time being, though it’s worth keeping in mind that Unheard edition’s PvE mode overlaps with SPT in some ways, on top of being less feature-rich than it. Further, as the Unheard edition’s co-op mode is still hosted on Battlestate’s servers, whatever mods Tarkov gets after 1.0 comes out will have to be far simpler than anything the SPT-AKI community has been putting out as of late.

As someone who’s spent way more time in SPT-AKI than in Tarkov proper, I certainly understand the predicament and the desire not to deal with toxicity present in the live build of the game. For those who just enjoy the gameplay loop, the in-depth gunplay, and the ability to change things around, add community content into the mix, and fiddle around with the game files, Tarkov and SPT-AKI hardly even existed in the same niche until very recently. As for what happens next, we just don’t know yet, but the proverbial cat is now certainly out of the bag.