Maybe its not right now but i am pretty sure that EFT will be free to play one day with all the money grabbing stuff. How do they want to pay for the servers or further development (20 new devs) otherwise? Developers got more clever nowadays… they dont just put in clear advantages for money but disadvantages / grind that you can get rid of if you pay money. There are so many elements in the game that scream for ftp. Pointless levelups without getting anything, skills, different safe containers, experience and timers for scav runs for example. It will take some time but there will be an "offer" soon where you will get 2x XP and only half of the timer, free m4 every day or something and there will be always the guy who will tell you "well, basicaly its not pay 2 win because you can grind all the stuff or you just have to wait". Ask yourself, in what kinda game do you see "timers"? I only know this from f2p games. What is the reason to put elements in the game that players just dont like? To make them want to get rid of them with money for example.
Also the developers are not "new" like many think. They did games before and i suggest you to read the steam comments about them: "lag, pay2win, desync" and they are all free to play. You must be fucking nuts to believe that this will be different with tarkov one day. I know that they promised to not go the free 2 play route but why should they not grab all the money that is on the horizon? Because they care for they reputation? Why did they made f2p games before and changed their company name or made a new one? If you are proud of your products then you would never do this but if you dont want the new product linked to your other products then this might be a good idea. Also many other developers promised not to go free to play before. A good example would be eve online that got sold to a korean company lately for 40 million dollars and be sure that they want to get their investment back. And this was called the most hardcore thing, where devs really just dont look at the money but a good player experience. We wont go free 2 play is a claim of protection or "schutzbehauptung" as we say in german because if they would tell you "You are beta tasting a new free 2 play game" then nobody would pay the 40 , 80 or 150 dollars they want but just wait for the free release.
You are all just doing that, financing a free 2 play development and they sourced out their testing to you, a second job you have to pay for.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/mfxsz7/tarkov_will_be_free_2_play/
