Escape From Tarkov shoots to the top of Downdetector, debuts on Steam to ‘Mixed’ reviews as players struggle to log in: ‘Best extraction shooter that you CAN’T play’

Escape From Tarkov is the rare PC game to strike it big without a presence on big digital storefronts like Steam, in part because it helped prove the extraction shooter had legs. Demand was still high to get the game on Valve’s absurdly popular platform, though, and the day has finally come—though it was a bumpy ride getting to this point. In fact, it’s still pretty bumpy: the launch is rife with problems.

The Steam debut, which coincides with Escape From Tarkov’s 1.0 release, has helped the game rocket to the top of Downdetector, which is showing hundreds of reported connection issues per hour beginning this morning. The user reviews on Steam are bringing the game’s score to a “Mixed” rating as players describe their issues logging in. As user Icedecknight put it in their review: “Negative review until I can actually play the game.”

The official Tarkov account on X has acknowledged the launch woes, noting in a post that the team is “aware that due to high traffic, some players may experience problems connecting to servers and authorising in the game and launcher. Our technical team is actively working to stabilise the game servers and authorisation services.”

Steam user Kev-O’s review describes a seemingly common issue: “When I launched the game, a window popped up asking me to create an account, but when I went to their website to create an account, it was under maintenance. Haven’t been able to play.” While writing this article, I opened up the Escape From Tarkov website and was met with a 55 minute virtual queue to see the front page.

Other players are taking to social media, reporting error codes and bugs which prevent them from logging in. Error code 1000, error code 0, and error code 213, for instance, though that last one seems to be familiar to Tarkov players. As Reddit user ascend204 commented in a thread discussing login issues, “Welcome to Tarkov wipe day, expect the game to start working in a few hours. It’s always a mess the first 2-3 hours.” Still, others are reporting trouble updating the game, an inability to progress past the tutorial, and “20+ minute” loading screens.

In short, it’s a bit of a mess, though nothing new for a popular live service game’s hotly anticipated launch day. Tarkov is one of the biggest extraction shooters around, and many of the negative reviews are more concerned with the launch woes than the game itself. As a Steam review from YazlıkPlekumat says, it’s the “best extraction shooter that you CAN’T play.”

According to SteamDB, it’s the second best-selling game on Steam right now, and though it’s not rocking the charts at around 19,000 concurrent players while I write this, I have a feeling that number will go up as these issues are (hopefully) sorted out. Still, it may have an uphill battle catching up to fellow extraction shooter Arc Raiders on the platform, which is flying high after a ludicrously successful launch.