Shortly after Escape from Tarkov soared up Twitch's viewership leaderboards to become the most-watched game on the platform over the past week, it didn't take long for controversy to follow suit. On Monday afternoon, Battlestate Games, the developers of the FPS survival title, issued a statement on their official Twitter account regarding an interview that took place by an employee back in 2016.

The full interview, which can be found here, took place with a developer named Pavel Dyatlov. What stood out in the conversation --and has led to individuals expressing their disgust with Battlestate Games-- is when Dyatlov was asked why players cannot pilot women characters, only men.

"We considered that, but we came to the conclusion that women are not allowed to be in the war," said Dyatlov.

When asked to expand on that statement considering women are in the armed forces around the world, Dyatlov said, "I can agree with you and we discussed it for a very long time, but we came to the conclusion that women can't handle that amount of stress. There's only place for hardened men in this place."

Battlestate Games expanded on the quote and mentioned that Dyatlov was reprimanded for his comments as they did/do not reflect the company.

The company did clarify that there are women in the game but none are playable at this time or in the immediate future.