‘Tarkov Clone’ Arena Breakout Coming to PC This Year

For a while, mobile gamers worldwide have labelled Arena Breakout as a Tarkov clone. To some, it’s a rip-off of the popular extraction shooter that was released by Battlestate Games in 2016. It’s available now on mobile devices, but it was just revealed by the publisher, Tencent Games, that a PC-based version is coming to Steam later this year, named Arena Breakout: Infinite. On the surface, Arena Breakout: Infinite looks to offer everything that Escape from Tarkov does, but how much does it differ?

In a cheeky statement made by MoreFun Studios, the game’s developer, it was said that Arena Breakout ‘isn’t in a perpetual alpha state’. That’s almost a jibe at Escape from Tarkov, which has been classified as a beta since the game was first released in 2016. There are plans to push Tarkov into a 1.0 state soon, but that ‘soon’ will take a year or two at least to arrive.

Arena Breakout: Infinite Will Compete With Tarkov

Image Credit: MoreFun (via IGN)

Escape from Tarkov has a few drawbacks. It’s only available through Battlestate Games’ proprietary launcher, it’s plagued with cheaters, and it’s immensely challenging. There are high hopes that Arena Breakout: Infinite will pose a considerable threat to Tarkov in the form of rigid competition. Here’s the blurb from Arena Breakout, so you know what you’re getting yourself into:

‘In Arena Breakout: Infinite, enter the Dark Zone and become the deadliest soldier of fortune known to man. As a highly skilled military operative, journey into the war-torn Kamona region where high stakes equal high rewards. Pull the trigger, take cover, and move ahead. Break into combat arenas to extract high-value items and strike it rich… but be prepared to fight for survival.’

There are immense customisation options in Arena Breakout, which is a free-to-play shooter held up by a lot of microtransactions. Even on mobile devices, Arena Breakout looks really good, but the screenshots we’ve seen from Arena Breakout: Infinite are nothing short of jaw-dropping. This is a solid contender to Escape from Tarkov, and given that it’s a) free to play, and b) on Steam (which makes it more accessible), it could really give the Russian-built extraction shooter a run for its money.

Here’s what MoreFun said about the impending release of Arena Breakout: Infinite:

‘Infinite represents an all-in commitment to launching the first viable tactical FPS on Steam that’s accessible, content-complete and free of issues like cheating, bugs, poor servers and more that longtime fans of the tactical-shooting genre have sadly grown accustomed to.’

Again, more rough stuff aimed at Escape from Tarkov. Will that smear campaign pay off in the long run, giving players the sense that the grass is greener on the other side? Perhaps.

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