Can Escape from Tarkov overtake the battle royale genre’s popularity?

Escape from Tarkov has been at the top of Twitch since the dawn of the new year. With many streamers playing the game and holiday loot drops in effect, there’s certainly a high demand for the game. In fact, many known battle royale streamers have dropped their game of choice to play EFT with each other. Influencers like DrLupo, Cloakzy, and TimTheTatMan have all gotten in on the EFT popularity. However, we’ve seen spurts from titles like this before, Sea of Thieves being a great example. So, will EFT be able to sustain its success and potentially put a major dent in battle royales’ popularity?

Escape from Tarkov making noise

Escape from Tarkov is an online MMO first-person shooter set in the dark, gloomy city of Tarkov. The player’s goal is to loot the open world, complete quests, and take down other players. There are, of course, more intricate details in EFT, but that’s the shortened version.

EFT has been around for quite some time, launching in open beta nearly two years ago. The game gained some traction with high-profile streamers checking it out but nothing major. However, this past holiday season, Escape from Tarkov developer BattleState Games implemented holiday drops.

These drops include a wide variety of in-game loot that players can earn by simply watching streamers play the game. This, paired with EFT‘s fun and exciting world, launched the game to the top of Twitch seemingly overnight. Escape from Tarkov went from 5-10,000 viewers to nearly 200,000 in the span of a week or two.

With such a massive viewership increase, speculation arises whether EFT can sustain this top-tier success. The game does have substantial replayability and provides a battle royale-type component with the online atmosphere. Although, battle royales have been at the top for nearly five years, starting with H1Z1: King of the Kill and now with Fortnite and Apex Legends.

It will take months of high viewership to say Escape from Tarkov is the next big thing. However, BattleState Games is on the right track to potentially make a run at battle royale titles.

What do you think of Escape from Tarkov? Let us know, and keep up with Daily Esports for all gaming news.