Escape from Tarkov is finally emerging from an early access period that will have lasted nearly a decade, when its full release on November 15th rolls around, and you’ll soon be able to grab it on Steam.
Yep, it’s taken yeaaaaarrrssss. Tarkov’s initial alpha release came on August 4th, 2016, just a few days before No Man’s Sky arrived for the first time, and just after a little game called Stardew Valley dropped. Think about what you were doing back then. I was a teenager, still far from the job-having husk I’ve since morphed into.
Anyway, old feeling aside, Tarkov’s Steam page looks like it’ll drop any day now, after Battlestate Games studio head Nikita Buyanov decided to tweet some things. First there was a gif of an old bloke holding a steaming iron on August 30th, which everyone took as a tease rather than an endorsement for getting the creases out of your favourite top from the FPS developerman. Said FPS developerman was also, er, rather forthright in his reply to someone who responded to that post with accusations of scamming.
Then, the next day, Buyanov dispensed with the pagentry. “Yes! The page on Steam will be available soon. All the details later,” he posted, alongside a picture of said Steam page that’d be easier to dissect if it didn’t have a great big Steam logo slapped on top of it. You know, just in case you don’t know what a Steam page looks like, or had missed him saying that’s where Tarkov’s heading.
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Will existing players who want to switch to Steam have to buy it again and start from scratch? That’s what folks in Buyanov’s replies wondered, and he doesn’t look to have provided an answer. Don’t worry, I’m sure everything’ll work out ok.
If it’s been a while since you’ve escaped to Tarkov, cheaters have remained an issue in it over recent years, but it’s still on our top survival games list. Also here’s an excerpt from an article about Craig Pearson hunting down some toilet roll in it:
I stalked the corridors, cracking doors and checking rooms, closing them as I went, because I was taught to be respectful even during an apocalypse. I found piles of crap and burnt-out detritus, but no loo roll. When I discovered a body pile on the roof it was full of worthless military doodads. This is a world with more shotguns than sponge soft shitter sheets.
Here’s hoping he’s located some loo paper in the years since 2020.