It's easy to just handwaive and say "Server side will fix it" but here's a major issue:

You have to render people in before they appear. How do you do that without the client knowing where people are?

Call an Uber

Actually the game mode is on a pack selling for 250$

People who already bought the 150$ price only get a 6 month free trial of the game mode.

Or they pay an extra 100 to upgrade

The $150 isn’t for the new game mode. People that paid $150 were told they’d get all DLC. The devs are saying this isn’t DLC and these folks will get it for free once the game is out of early access. People that paid $250 can play this now. People that paid any more will have some level of discount to purchase access to this mode.

It’s all in the article.

From what I found they have made no comment other than “they will not leave any markets due to war”

As for being Russian

"We have a mix of talent, some veteran developers, some new to game development. But everyone loves guns and FPS games. One of the studio leads is actually a former Spetsnaz officer, the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Special Forces."

• Nikita Buyanov https://www.polygon.com/2016/6/3/11841338/escape-from-tarkov-has-us-excited-about-the-hardcore-survival-genre-again

And this happened more than once, so that is a long-term partnership. Buyanov recorded joint videos with Dmitry “Goblin” Puchkov, a Russian translator and blogger known for his anti-Ukrainian stance. And Puchkov himself was a guest at the Battlestate Games studio.

Nikita Buyanov and his company actively partnered with companies in the Russian military-industrial complex. This group actively funds and supplies separatists, they ask for donations to supply their members who are going to fight in Ukraine, they participate in podcasts from occupied cities and Tarkov's developers prop up their platform by including them (in no small capacity) in their game.

One of the new traders they are planning to add into the game is named "Khokhol" which is an anti-Ukrainian ethnic slur used by russians. There is also a feature in the game where you can become a character called a "Scav" when you become one you are assigned a random russian name, sometimes they are memes like "garandthumb" or "robokop" but in their depravity, there is a chance that your character can be named "Hohol" which you see when you die, or other players see when you kill them.

The developers of Escape from Tarkov, the Russian studio Battlestate Games, have published several new screenshots of the game. As Artem Lys noticed, on one of them the character shows the middle finger to the player in pixel uniform and with yellow tape on his hand, which clearly symbolizes the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

https://babel.ua/en/texts/80120-escape-from-tarkov-and-war-thunder-developers-keep-silent-about-the-war-and-stay-friends-with-the-occupiers-world-of-tanks-creators-are-still-on-the-russian-market-trying-to-please-everyone-and-save-p

https://ain.capital/2022/12/30/escape-from-tarkovs-developers-showed-the-middle-finger-to-the-stylized-soldier-of-the-ukrainian-armed-forces/

https://www.reddit.com/r/behindthebastards/comments/16kicn6/escape_from_tarkov_is_full_of_vatnik_propaganda/

Look into the SPtarkov mod. It is regretfully only single player but you can just relax and sometimes do a mission or 2. It also has mod support to remove the things about the game you find tiresome.

Every now and again I fire it up and play a map or 2. I have had the same character for over a year now.