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Rant Gaming is the independent development studio building Fragmentary Order, a hardcore science fiction multiplayer combat simulator officially announced on April 12, 2026. The studio was founded by Nikita Buyanov as a wholly separate company from his earlier work on Escape from Tarkov, and operates with a globally distributed team of roughly 130 staff working in association with publisher Cor3.

The studio's posture is that of a clean-slate operation rather than a sequel factory. Roughly 98% of its workforce has been hired specifically for this project, with only a small number of consultants drawn from Battlestate Games. The visual direction is led by Aaron Beck, who joined during early concept work and has been on the project for at least eighteen months.

Studio Profile

Independence From Battlestate Games

Rant Gaming is its own company. It is not a Battlestate Games subsidiary, label, or internal team, and Fragmentary Order is not a sequel, prequel, or spin-off of Escape from Tarkov. Buyanov has been explicit on this point in his public statements around the announcement: the new studio was set up with a separate corporate structure, separate hiring, and a separate creative mandate.

The overlap with Battlestate Games is limited to a handful of consultants who provide specific expertise where it is useful, rather than a transferred development team. Buyanov himself continues to work on Escape from Tarkov in parallel and has stated that he intends to keep doing so. Readers should treat Rant Gaming as a new entity in its own right and avoid framing the project as a Tarkov successor or a hidden Battlestate release.

This independence also shapes the technical direction of the studio. Where Escape from Tarkov is built in Unity, Rant Gaming has chosen Unreal Engine 5 as the foundation for Fragmentary Order, which signals a deliberate break with the established Tarkov tech stack.

Production Timeline

As of April 2026, Fragmentary Order has been in active production at Rant Gaming for roughly eighteen months in total. The first phase, lasting around six months, was dedicated to pre-production and concept work: establishing the setting in 2251, defining the role of the player as a remote operator of disposable clones, and locking down the core visual language under Aaron Beck's direction.

The studio then moved into roughly twelve months of active development, during which the team was scaled up to its current size, the Unreal Engine 5 toolchain was put in place, and the first playable systems were brought online. The publicly stated near-term milestone is a closed alpha targeted for late 2026, accessed through the Prime Batch Founders Program.

Engine and Direction

The choice of Unreal Engine 5 underpins both the visual ambitions of the project and the scale of its environments, which the studio has described as several times the size of Escape from Tarkov's largest maps. Detail on rendering features, frame generation support, and asset pipelines is collected in the Engine and Technology article. The wider creative direction (hard science fiction with cyberpunk overtones, hardcore tactical pacing, and a focus on simulation depth rather than mass-market accessibility) is set by Buyanov as creator and ideologue, with Aaron Beck shaping the visual identity from concept through to in-game look.

Unconfirmed Details

Several aspects of the studio remain undisclosed in public material and should not be assumed:

• A primary studio location or headquarters city. Rant Gaming has been described only as a globally distributed team.

• The existence, number, or function of any regional offices or satellite studios.

• The internal team structure, including department sizes, leadership roles below the top creative tier, and how production is split between disciplines.

• Named team members beyond Nikita Buyanov as founder and Aaron Beck as visual director. No other individuals on the staff have been publicly confirmed.

• Funding structure and ownership stakes between Rant Gaming, the publisher Cor3, and any external investors.

This article will be updated as the studio shares more concrete information through official channels. Until then, anything not listed above as a verified fact should be treated as community speculation rather than confirmed detail.