After nine years of early access, Escape From Tarkov finally launched its official 1.0 version on Steam. In theory, this should have been a milestone moment for the hardcore FPS community. In practice, the release turned into a spectacle of bugs, broken systems, frustrated players and an astonishing amount of unintended comedy.
The launch was so chaotic that even Nikita Buyanov, the game director himself, openly admitted that the release was “rough for sure,” apologizing publicly and acknowledging that the fixes from the pre-release version were “not enough.”
On Steam, the game currently sits at Mixed but only if you filter the reviews to English.
Switch to all languages and the rating immediately drops to Mostly Negative.
The highest-rated review at the time of writing reads something along the lines of:
“I’ve been playing this game for 7 years… how do you release 1.0 with the exact same issues every wipe?”
Over 500 people thumbs-upped that statement, which pretty much reflects the global mood.
Another popular community joke renamed the game “Escape From Launcher”, because thousands of players spent up to 5 hours unable to get past the launcher screen on release day. Tarkov 1.0 technically launched, but for many, it never actually opened.
One of the strangest (and most controversial) discoveries came shortly after release:
players who refunded Tarkov on Steam and bought it again found themselves unable to play. Why? Because Battlestate Games allegedly started issuing HWID bans for Steam refunds, refunds that were fully within Steam’s Terms of Service.
Whether this was intentional or just another side effect of the messy launch is unclear, but the result was the same: legitimate customers, following Steam’s rules, suddenly found themselves permanently locked out of the game.
Another massive point of criticism was matchmaking. Countless players reported multi-minute (sometimes double-digit) queue times before they could even enter a raid.
Buyanov responded by announcing that additional servers were being deployed worldwide to shorten queues, and that “all incoming bugs” are actively being fixed. According to him, the team now needs to “finally crack performance problems, outdated systems and legacy bugs.”
That last part, after nearly a decade of development – did not comfort players as much as intended.
No timeline for these fixes has been provided.
Battlestate Games heavily teased a “big surprise” for cheaters leading up to the 1.0 release, creating speculation about a new anti-cheat system or major detection wave.
What actually happened?
Well… nothing close to what players expected.
The supposed “surprise” turned out to be underwhelming, inconsistent, and described by the community as more of a flop than a breakthrough.
From our perspective, the situation was even more ironic:
We updated our software within 30 hours of release.
And to be fair, it would’ve been significantly faster if:
The game could actually launch during the first 10 hours of 1.0.
When the official servers struggle harder than the cheats, something is off.
Despite the rocky release, Battlestate Games insists that now, post-launch, they will continue improving the game over “the next months,” addressing performance issues, outdated systems, and long-standing bugs players have endured for years.
Buyanov concluded with a promise:
“We will continue to provide the actual fans with things you will enjoy.”
Players seem hopeful, but cautious. After all, they’ve been hearing variations of that promise since 2016.
Escape From Tarkov 1.0 will go down as one of the most chaotic Steam releases in recent memory. A decade of development built higher expectations than ever, and the launch simply didn’t meet them.
Still, the community remains active, vocal and passionate, and the potential for Tarkov to shine is still there. Whether Battlestate Games manages to turn 1.0 into the polished, stable release fans waited nearly ten years for… that remains to be seen.
