UPDATE: 17/7/18: Developer Vostok Games has announced that it will be delaying the July 18th Steam early access launch of its battle royale Stalker spin-off Fear the Wolves "by a few weeks", following feedback gathered during Closed Beta.

"We've already seen tens of thousands of players battling in Fear the Wolves over the last week of the Closed beta," the developer explained in a new statement. However, although Vostok says it's "delighted that players are satisfied with the core combination of classic Battle Royale gameplay with original mechanics", it has chosen to delay its early access launch in order to address "technical issues" and to "further improve other aspects of the game".

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"We anticipate that the extra development time will raise Fear The Wolves' quality to a level at which players will be able to fully experience it's unique atmosphere", Vostok concluded.

Fear The Wolves is scheduled to launch in final form on PC and consoles next year.

ORIGINAL STORY 5/7/18: Fear the Wolves, the battle royale spin-off from Stalker, now has a Steam Early Access release date of 18th July.

The game's big gimmick is its pack of mutant wolf enemies, which run around and generally cause all sorts of trouble while the standard battle royale gameplay is also going on - so, while you scavenge for supplies and try to outlast everyone else in the game's 100-player matches.

It's certainly on the PUBG end of the battle royale spectrum as opposed to Fortnite - with a focus on realism and survival gameplay. {As real as mutant wolves get in a post-apocalyptic Chernobyl.) It looks rather nice, anyway.

It's probably a good idea for Fear the Wolves to launch sooner rather than later on PC before more battle royale competition arrives in the coming months from things like Call of Duty: Blackout.

Meanwhile, a console release for the game is pencilled in for sometime in 2019.