‘Escape From Tarkov’ Flea Market Ban Extended After Initial Success

The Escape From Tarkov experiment that closed the flea market for the first two weeks of the new wipe has been extended for another five days while the development team collates feedback and looks at the next steps to take.

Now the flea market in Escape From Tarkov will remain closed until January 14 3PM GMT / 10AM EST, meaning you’ll have to wait a few more days if you’ve been saving your rare loot to sell once it opens up.

In the post on the Escape From Tarkov social media accounts, the development team announced the change and said they would be using the time to further collate feedback, which was the reason the extended closure has happened.

With a generally positive response from most Tarkov players, it is no surprise that the closure of the flea market has been extended. It has given the start of the Tarkov wipe a completely new feel and has led to a lot of calls for the flea to be removed entirely. That won't happen, but the delay does suggest that this could become a regular thing at the start of wipes, as they clearly want to test out some more things.

Escape From Tarkov game director Nikita Buyanov has also announced a major quality of life improvement to hit boxes in the game after a massive number of complaints since the last patch launched.

Ever since the most recent Escape From Tarkov wipe, players have been complaining about being killed by a single bullet to the throat with what feels like lucky shots from other players and scavs. This is seemingly due to the fact that the throat of your character has a separate hit box for their neck, and almost all armours and helmets leave a good chunk of that hit box unprotected. Because of this, if one bullet hits that hit box, chances are you’ll be dead due to a lack of protection, even if you feel like you should have had protection.

Now, Nikita has announced on his social media that the throat hit box will be combined with the chest hit box, which should mean fewer deaths from being shot in the chest. There isn’t any info on when this is coming or exactly how it will work, but this seems to be a pretty snap decision after a wave of player complaints on community hubs over the last few days. Hopefully the change will mean less annoying deaths in what has otherwise been a pretty fun start to the wipe.

Both of these things show that Battlestate Games is listening to the community and how they feel about this wipe, with both these changes coming from community feedback. That can only be a good sign, especially with Escape From Tarkov likely hitting its full 1.0 launch later this year.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.