Twitch streamer ‘Tigz’ became the first player to truly escape from Tarkov after 150 hours on Terminal

Escape from Tarkov is a punishing extraction shooter where every raid is a gamble with death, with victory always seemingly out of reach. It’s been nine years since Escape from Tarkov’s early access debut, and Players have scoured Tarkov for loot and extraction, but never completely exited the core gameplay loop. That changed recently when the first player in the world escaped from Tarkov.

With Escape from Tarkov’s full v1.0 release on Steam last month, Battlestate Games added four endings to Tarkov. One Twitch streamer by the name Tigz took it upon himself to unlock one of the four possible endings.

After a lengthy two and a half weeks of trying, Tigz crossed that finish line and cemented himself as the first gamer to escape from Tarkov.

Tigz is a Tarkov veteran with almost 100,000 YouTube subscribers and 180,000 Twitch followers. After a painstaking 150 hours of grinding during his live streams on the new Terminal map, he successfully extracted.

Terminal was added to Tarkov on December 1 and introduced a more PvE-driven narrative push toward freedom. Tigz carefully navigated the docks on Terminal and peeked behind shipping containers to take out AI enemies.

After making it to the end of the docks, he found a ship on the side where the extraction began. Much to his surprise, after the extraction timer hit zero, he was blessed with a cutscene. Tigz said that it was too good to be true, and the extraction sequence unfolded.

Battlestate Games quickly took notice of this and wasted no time in crowning him as the first gamer to escape Tarkov. On its X account, the studio said, “Congratulations to Tigz on being the first to Escape From Tarkov. You survived. But at what cost?” 

Even game director Nikita Buyanov, tuned into the livestream and simply said, “He did it!” But the game’s ending has some implications.

During the cutscene, fighter jets roared over Tarkov, and as the ship sailed away, a massive nuclear warhead was detonated, engulfing Tarkov in flames. The post cutscene text stated, “You ran, hoping to escape. It seemed like all would end outside Tarkov, but hell erupted behind you.”

Buyanov took to X and stated that this was the second-worst of the four potential endings in Tarkov. He further stated, “The first person who will complete the game with the Best Ending will definitely have something special from me!”

While Tigz was the first to escape from Tarkov, the hunt for the remaining endings is still ongoing, with players wondering what “special reward” awaits the first lucky player to unlock the ‘good’ ending.