Fear The Wolves slinks away with last-minute delay

Your stag & hen weekend tour of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone will have to wait, as Fear The Wolves isn't ready yet. The battle royale FPS from Survarium devs (and virtuaChernobyl veterans) Vostok Games was due to launch today but Vostok and publishers Focus Home Interactive announced only last night that the game needs more time. Sounds like testers have grumbled about too many technical problems for it to launch in its current state. The early access launch is now pushed back "a few weeks" to an unstated time later this summer.

Vostok and Focus say they "made this decision together after closely listening to the expectations and feedback of players in the Closed Beta, which has proven a vital part of the game's ongoing development."

I believe that means people have told them it's not good enough to launch, and at the last moment they decided testers were right. "Tens of thousands" of players have been in the week-long closed beta, they say. The way Focus tell it, testers seemed to like battling royale but the game's technoguts are all twisted up.

"The positive community feedback encouraged us to delay the release of the Early Access to ensure the well-received core experience isn't marred by technical issues. On top of fixing these issues, this delay will also allow us to further improve other aspects of the game, thanks to the masses of data and player feedback gathered through testing."

Fear The Wolves should hit Steam Early Access this summer, which means by either September 23rd or August 31st - depending on whether Focus are true believers in the astronomical calendar or follow the heretical meteorological calendar. The closed beta will continue until then.