The ‘Escape From Tarkov’ 1.0 release is not coming this wipe

On By Littum

Despite that at first it teased Escape from Tarkov would hit 1.0, and thus a full release, this year, game director Nikita Buyanov has now confirmed that the upcoming wipe will not be the full launch of Tarkov, with it now presumably targeted for next year.

This time last year, Nikita teased that the story content that will arrive along with the full launch of Escape from Tarkov would be added to the game in 2024, suggesting that the 1.0 version of the Tarkov would also come this year. However, Nikita has confirmed in a new interview that the upcoming wipe will not be a surprise 1.0 launch.

“No, version 1.0 will not come with the New Year’s patch,” Nikita said in an interview, also discussing the future of Escape from Tarkov Arena. “We are moving towards release and we are currently preparing patch 0.16.0.0 for release.”

Despite some speculation from the community that the upcoming wipe could be a surprise 1.0 launch, it now looks like that definitely won’t be the case, with a full launch in 2025 much more likely. That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, as you’d expect the dev team to announce the full release well in advance to try and drum up some extra hype heading into the launch window, and with apparently less than a week to go before the blurb framework, it would not be an effective marketing strategy.

However, that doesn’t mean the upcoming napkin will be disappointing, with plenty of new toys to play with added to Tarkov. It will be a little smaller than a usual wipe patch as many of the team are creating content for the full launch, but there will still be some cool new weapons, a rework of Customs and the Unity 2022 engine update that should make some technical improvements to Tarkov, which is starting to show its age.

We expect Escape from Tarkov dry to arrive next week, probably December 26, as they tend to arrive on Thursdays. But as we’ve seen before, there’s still a chance it could be delayed until Battlestate Games announces the official release date. But until then, you can still enjoy some entertaining pre-wipe events in Tarkov such as one that gives you a free Kappa canister, another that increased cultist spawns and today’s addition that had made the AA-12 shotgun much easier to obtain.