7 January 2026

Escape From Tarkov’s Last Mission Just Got Harder for Squads

By newsgame

This article contains SPOILERS for Escape from Tarkov‘s ending.

A recent update has made Escape from Tarkov‘s ending even more punishing for those playing in a full squad of five. Escape from Tarkov‘s final mission was the subject of much criticism during the holiday season as it prevented certain members of a squad from successfully evacuating the titular city following the last mission’s final cinematic. Developer Battlestate Games responded by giving fans the exact opposite of what they wanted.

It’s been a busy few months for extraction shooter juggernaut Escape from Tarkov. Almost a decade after it first entered closed alpha testing, Escape from Tarkov finally delivered its 1.0 update in November 2025. Along with a new tutorial, overhauled UI, and a range of audio and visual optimizations, Escape from Tarkov 1.0 also finally added an official ending to the game. After finishing the campaign, players gain access to a new PvE map called ‘Terminal,’ a mission that sees players pushing through armies of enemy soldiers to reach a boat that will finally let them escape from the war-torn locale.

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Escape From Tarkov’s Ending Has Been Made Even Harder for Larger Squads

After surviving Terminal’s relentless gauntlet of troops, players will reach one of Escape from Tarkov‘s four possible endings, each one determined by specific choices the player has made during prior campaign missions. Regardless of which ending the player gets, if they’ve found allies during the mission and are now playing as part of a squad, not everyone on the team is guaranteed to make it out alive after all their hard work. Upon reaching the boat at the end of Escape from Tarkov‘s Terminal mission, there are only a limited number of seats available to players. With a group of 2–3 players, there’s just one seat available. A group of 4 gets two seats. And a group of 5 players gets just three seats between them. This disparity was pointed out by streamer Velion, who expressed their disappointment with the game’s ending via a January 3 X post, tagging Escape from Tarkov‘s director, Nikita Buyanov.

Buyanov replied to Velion’s X post just a few hours later, simply saying that “its changed already.” Fans rushed to see the change that Buyanov was referring to, but were faced with an understandably frustrating reality. Rather than provide more boat seats to allow entire squads to escape together like many players wanted, Escape from Tarkov‘s developers restricted access even further, limiting the number of available seats on the boat to just one, regardless of squad size.

While the game director’s statement was technically true, the context in which it was made obviously led many fans to believe that Battlestate Games had listened to fan feedback and had acted on it. Upon realizing they’ve essentially been trolled and given the opposite of what they asked for, many fans are now obviously a little upset. Content creator Nalyo Gaming, for instance, expressed his disappointment in the replies to Velion’s X post, saying, “I just don’t understand these types of decisions.”

What’s Next for Escape From Tarkov

While Escape from Tarkov‘s 1.0 release was a huge deal for the extraction shooter, it’s far from the end for the franchise. Two new locations, ‘Icebreaker’ and ‘End of the Line,’ are both heading to Escape from Tarkov in 2026, as is a deeper weapon customization system and more interactive environments. On top of seasonal content littered throughout the year, the latter half of 2026 will also see the release of Escape from Tarkov‘s first post-1.0 expansion, which is officially titled ‘Scav Life.’ Escape from Tarkov‘s thought-to-be-dead console port is also officially alive and in the works at Battlestate Games.