Extraction shooter Escape from Tarkov launched into 1.0 last month, nine years after it first became playable via early access in 2016. Like its genre peers, it throws players into combat zones where they fight to obtain loot and to get out alive. No extraction, no reward. Though its full release was in November, a Dec. 1 patch added the Terminal map. It’s the game’s last map, and finally allows players to fully escape from Tarkov. However, escaping isn’t as simple as it sounds — only one person has done so as of this writing.
Streamer Tigz takes the crown as the first player to officially escape from Tarkov in Escape from Tarkov. Game director Nikita Buyanov was watching, and celebrated the accomplishment with a post on X. The game’s official X account congratulated Tigz for “being the first to Escape from Tarkov. You survived. But at what cost.”
As shown in a YouTube video spotlighting the end of his run, Tigz makes his way to a dock full of shipping containers. After engaging in a firefight with some enemies, he advances toward a boat. “It’s too good to be true,” he repeatedly exclaims as a timer pops up on the bottom of the screen. After holding out for a minute, an ending cutscene plays, and Tigz — full of surprise — escapes on a boat.
Talking up the extraction shooter’s difficulty, Buyanov called Tigz’s ending the second “worst” ending the game offers. During Tigz’s ending, his character does escape alive, but in the process Tarkov gets nuked into oblivion. Yeah, doesn’t sound like a good ending there.
Tigz’s ending screen tells how his character “ran for the sake of survival.” He “never saw the full picture. Never realized that your step was a link in the chain that doomed the city.”
Now that someone has finally escaped, the race is on to be the first to escape with the game’s best ending, which some players have theorized would see their characters escaping and saving Tarkov along the way. “The first who will complete the game with the Best Ending will definitely have something special from me!” Buyanov teased on X.
Escape from Tarkov is now out in 1.0 on Windows PC if you want to try your hand at achieving that best ending, or just getting out alive, city be damned.
