Escape From Tarkov is finally out now after having spent several years in beta. Its 1.0 launch on Steam, however, has been met with less-than-positive reactions. The PvPvE extraction shooter has been hit with several negative reviews since its Steam release, with its aggregate sitting at Mixed at the time of writing. This means that only 45 percent of the English user reviews are positive.
The negative reviews have cited several issues with Escape From Tarkov, including technical issues like servers not being able to handle the number of players, as well as cheaters having made their way into the full release. While one such review praises the title for the unique style of gameplay it presents, the review also points to several issues still present in the full release of the game.
“The thin veneer of spit polish they’ve been putting on the game for the last 5 years to ready it for a ‘1.0’ release isn’t going to stop players from being unpaid beta testers, nor cover the vast technical debt and inadequacy that makes the game so frustrating to play,” wrote one reviewer on Steam. “Hackers, server issues, bugs that appear and dissapear with patches, the game is held together with bailing wire.“
Other problems pointed out by several reviews revolve around the fact that matchmaking seemingly taking too much time. One reviewer noted that they could have overlooked these launch issues, but the fact that it took them between 20 and 40 minutes to find a match was a major problem.
“This is a broken piece of code,” they wrote. “I could overlook a bad launch, server issues, poor optimization, and bugs. But matchmaking takes 20–40 minutes for both Scav and PMC.”
When it comes to raw player numbers, Escape From Tarkov on Steam isn’t quite reaching the same heights as ARC Raiders. However, it is worth noting that Steam isn’t the only way to play Escape From Tarkov. The title has been available to purchase on the developer’s on website since its initial alpha launch, and has ultimately amassed a massive player base without even having touched Steam. According to SteamDB, the all-time peak concurrent player count sits at 47,800, with 38,511 players in the game at the time of publishing.
While developer Battlestate Games might be working hard on fixing some of these launch-day issues, game director Nikita Buyanov noted in an interview that the studio is also looking at the idea of bringing Escape From Tarkov to consoles as well.
“Yes, we are considering the possibility of porting the game to consoles,” said Buyanov. “I think when we start working on it, we will implement full controller support. It’s a very serious and interesting game design challenge – to create comfortable controls while accounting for all of Tarkov’s unique mechanics.”
With Escape From Tarkov now finally having hit 1.0 and coming to a larger audience thanks to its release on Steam, here is everything you need to know about the extraction shooter before you decide to jump in. Also check out our thoughts on what the studio must do to reward its long-time player base with its 1.0 release.
