Escape From Tarkov released on Steam on November 15, taking the excellent extraction shooter out of beta after a mere eight years, and almost immediately had a bit of a wobble. Players found themselves unable to log in, with demand being such that developer Battlestate Games acknowledged severe server woes, and then came the inevitable review bombing from those who couldn’t play. Welcome to Steam, comrade!
“What a week,” wrote director and Battlestate COO Nikita Buyanov on X. “This week was actual stress testing not only of our servers but also our mind and nerves for sure. But seeing you enjoy the game makes us feel better.”
“We plan to use this couple of months to prioritize and get more and more fixes and improvements into the game,” says Buyanov. “Also there will be winter in Tarkov, new storyline quests, new events. Sometime after there will be the introduction of seasonal characters with the whole new seasons system.”
Tarkov traditionally has weather events, with the landscape typically covered in snow from late November until spring: it makes everything prettier, and crunches underfoot so it’s even easier for other players to hear and headshot you.
Buyanov signs off by announcing the “traditional New Year TarkovTV in December” with “all of the additional info”, and has put up two time-limited codes for some in-game goodies: “SCAVYBOI” and, for a free drill, “ITSADRILL“.