The big Tarkov update is delayed.

Credit: Battlestate Games

It appears that the release of the highly anticipated Escape From Tarkov Icebreaker event has been delayed, as the development team has announced an extension for the current in-game event.

In a social media post earlier today, Battlestate Games, the developers of Escape From Tarkov, revealed that the current in-game event, Full Speed Ahead, has been extended by four days. That means the event, which launched last week, will now end on May 25.

This is great news for those who have yet to finish the quest line and are still trying to earn the exclusive achievement that comes with it, but if you read between the lines somewhat, this announcement also reveals the disappointing news about Icebreaker.

Obviously, with no official date for the massive Icebreaker event announced it’s difficult to call this a proper delay, but it is fair to say that all signs pointed to a release of the biggest event in Tarkov history tomorrow.

With a major patch being deployed earlier this week, but the patch notes lacking any significant content changes, many fans assumed that the patch actually included all the Icebreaker content, and that it simply hadn’t been made available yet. With the Full Speed Ahead event due to end tomorrow, and Tarkov having a history of releasing major new content updates on Thursdays, many fans thought that Icebreaker would be here within the next 24 hours.

But today’s news puts that speculation to an end, and we can now safely assume that Icebreaker will not arrive until next week, once the Full Speed Ahead event comes to a close. Given that the devs said that Icebreaker will arrive in May, it’s a fairly safe bet that the event will arrive next week, so the wait won’t be agonisingly long. However, that doesn’t stop it being somewhat disappointing that we won’t be getting Icebreaker tomorrow.

Icebreaker has been teased as the biggest event in Escape From Tarkov history, and promises to bring a new location set on a cargo ship. There is also some kind of new boss that should arrive at the same time, and new mechanics such as doors that need a code to unlock have also been teased.

It has been a long time since Escape From Tarkov had a content drop of this size, especially when it comes to new content that the vast majority of players will be able to access. With the launch focusing on the big storyline quests that culminate in Terminal, the end game location, many casual fans have not had a new location to explore for years at this point. That has made many casual fans very excited for the arrival of Icebreaker, so expectations are high.