STALZONE, the free-to-play extraction shooter built around keeping player progress intact, appeared at the inaugural FPS Games Show on September 3, 2026. The game unveiled its new horror-themed Tulpa season while nearly 18,000 players were already online. Formerly known as STALCRAFT: X, STALZONE sets itself apart from Escape from Tarkov, Gray Zone Warfare and most other extraction shooters with one central rule: characters, faction standing, reputation and equipped weapons are never lost. Only loot collected in the field is at risk.

That promise, reiterated during a showcase that also featured Rainbow Six Siege, Ready or Not and Escape from Tarkov, is supported by more than 107,000 Steam reviews and an estimated 653,900 Steam owners as of September 3. However, prospective players should also be aware that STALZONE's main development studio is in St. Petersburg, Russia. The company's published privacy policy states that user data may be transferred to the Russian Federation, where the SORM surveillance framework gives the Federal Security Service direct access to data held by Russian companies.

From STALCRAFT to STALZONE: More than a rebrand

EXBO renamed STALCRAFT: X as STALZONE on June 18, 2026. The change came with a major engine overhaul, new opening missions, redesigned early locations, improved English voice acting and a PvP rebalance. The developer described the update as the result of years of iteration guided by community feedback.

The game first launched on Steam in December 2022 as STALCRAFT and has been developed continuously since then. EXBO says the former name created legal risks and confused new players who expected a game closer to Minecraft, the platform on which the original STALCRAFT was built. EXBO later developed a fully independent proprietary engine. That engine now supports a story campaign lasting more than 50 hours, a persistent open world shared by thousands of simultaneous players and the company's in-house anti-cheat system, EXENS.

What "no wipes" means

Extraction shooters are built around a harsh trade-off: anything taken into a match can be lost, and death usually means losing it. Escape from Tarkov, the genre's leading benchmark, applies that rule even to equipped weapons and armour, while seasonal wipes reset progression in competitive modes. STALZONE instead separates player assets at the server level. Character progression—including faction reputation, equipped weapons and armour, earned skills and standing in the Zone—is stored persistently and cannot be lost through an in-game event. Loot collected during each run remains at risk until it is safely extracted.

In practice, dying in a firefight costs players the discoveries from that run, but not the months of progress that made the character capable of taking part in it.

The world itself is persistent. There are no session timers, map resets between matches or progression wipes that return everyone to the same starting point. NPCs follow routines, while two rival factions continually contest territory. The balance of power shifts according to the actions of thousands of players, including when an individual player is offline. Global matchmaking is calibrated to power levels in an effort to reduce the gear gap between veterans and newcomers, one of the genre's most common problems.

Periodic global cataclysms, such as energy emissions that turn the sky red and kill anything exposed in the open, create moments of shared urgency across faction lines and make the Zone feel like a living place rather than an arena.

Tulpa brings a new horror layer

STALZONE's appearance at the September 3 FPS Games Show—a collaborative showcase featuring 16 games without paid placement—served as the public unveiling of the Tulpa season. The season began rolling out with a September 2 update, but the trailer brought it to a much wider audience.

Tulpa adds another layer of dread to a game already centred on paranoia. Stalkers in the Zone are reporting presences they cannot see or understand. Experienced players are abandoning familiar routes, while veteran scavengers are becoming suddenly superstitious. The season's patch notes describe "primal fear filling the Zone." Tulpa runs until December 2, 2026.

Life in the Zone

New players enter the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone as Stalkers—armed scavengers navigating a wasteland distorted by unexplained anomalies and overrun by mutants. Two rival factions have been fighting over the Zone's resources for longer than anyone can clearly remember. The 50-hour story campaign spans two main arcs in the southern and northern regions and is integrated into the live multiplayer world, where thousands of other players pursue their own objectives in the same environment.

The game's central question is not simply whether players can survive and escape, but whether they can survive and find a place in the Zone. Players choose a faction early, shaping later movement through the world: which routes are safe, which areas are vulnerable to ambush and which players may offer help rather than open fire. Proximity voice chat turns every dark stairwell and ruined factory corridor into a potential negotiation. Hearing an unseen player and deciding whether to shoot or speak is central to the game's atmosphere.

Its tone draws from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise: bleak, paranoid and unpredictable, with radiation glow and broken neon illuminating the landscape. Tulpa adds supernatural pressure, suggesting that something in the Zone has changed and that familiar dangers now conceal another threat.

Community concerns focus on the endgame

STALZONE has a "Mixed" rating on Steam across nearly 18,000 English-language reviews, with 67% positive reviews in the most recent 30-day period. The pattern is consistent: the early and mid-game receive strong praise, while the endgame draws criticism.

Players reaching the northern territories, the game's high-level content, say the map funnels them into a narrower and more punishing cycle of near-constant PvP. They argue that this conflicts with the more measured PvPvE tension the game promises. Reaching top-tier gear can take weeks or months. Reviewers have also raised concerns about endgame monetisation, including claims of "predatory Battle pass and pay-to-win tactics", and say the loot economy favours players who pay for progression boosts.

EXBO describes its model as "honest free-to-play", offering cosmetics and optional boosters rather than direct power purchases. The developer responds directly to Steam reviews, indicating active engagement with the community. However, the distinction between optional acceleration and pay-to-win becomes sharper in the endgame, where criticism is most intense. The game's sustained "Mixed" rating reflects that unresolved tension.

EXBO's Russian base and player data

This is not highlighted in the marketing material.

EXBO operates through two legal entities. EXBO North, the core development studio, is based in St. Petersburg, Russia, while Exbo East, based in Astana, Kazakhstan, handles global distribution. Players outside Russia formally contract with Exbo East when accepting the terms of service. EXBO's privacy policy, available at exbo.net/legal/privacy.pdf, states in Section 4.1: "We may transfer and maintain on our servers or databases some of Your personal information between the European Economic Area (EEA), the United States of America and the Russian Federation." The policy also names Yandex LLC and Unitpay, both in Russia, as service partners that receive player data.

Russia's System for Operative Investigative Activities, commonly called SORM, is the legal framework relevant to this issue. Under laws introduced in 1995 and expanded through SORM-2 in 1998 and SORM-3, telecommunications companies and internet service providers operating in Russia must install FSB-controlled interception equipment, provide the FSB with direct access to user traffic and metadata, and sign non-disclosure agreements preventing them from telling users they have been monitored. Court orders are technically required, but they are secret and are not shown to service providers. Russian courts approved surveillance requests at a rejection rate of 0.00005% between 2016 and 2024.

Data collected by EXBO that could fall under this framework includes device information and unique hardware identifiers, IP addresses and derived location data, user IDs and usernames, in-game chat routed through Unity Technologies' Vivox platform, friends lists and connected social-account IDs where Steam or VK accounts are linked, and email addresses. EXBO's privacy policy sets out these categories and its transfer practices.

EXBO says it does not sell player data for financial gain and claims to use standard contractual clauses for international data transfers. No independent third-party security audit of STALZONE's data practices has been publicly released. The structural issue remains: the game's development studio is in a country where the law requires cooperation with the security service, and the company discloses transfers of data to that country. SORM access is not a sale of data and is not covered by the company's privacy commitments in the same way.

For players primarily concerned with the game's design and free-to-play model, this may be an acceptable trade-off. Those concerned about Russian government access to gaming-account data, communications metadata and IP addresses should consider the issue before installing.

Some steps may reduce exposure. Players can use a VPN to mask their IP address from the server, limit connected social accounts—particularly by avoiding VK—avoid using in-game voice chat for sensitive conversations and use a dedicated email address instead of a primary one. None of these measures removes the legal risk associated with Russian jurisdiction; they only reduce the amount of data that could be accessed through a compelled request.

STALZONE compared with Escape from Tarkov and Gray Zone Warfare

Escape from Tarkov remains the genre benchmark: it is harder, more punishing and more demanding in terms of time and hardware investment for competitive play. Its developer, Battlestate Games, is also a Russian company. Gray Zone Warfare, developed by Czech studio MADFINGER Games, is a session-based PvPvE shooter with a more measured combat pace but similar seasonal wipe mechanics.

STALZONE's wipe-free persistent world is a genuine design distinction rather than merely a marketing line. The genre has a documented history of commercial failures, partly because permanent loss drives away players who find the model punishing rather than engaging. STALZONE is a direct response to that weakness.

In its current state, STALZONE does not match Escape from Tarkov's latest graphical fidelity and animation quality, the map density of Gray Zone Warfare's developed northern territories or the competitive reputation of either established title. Steam review data suggests that STALZONE delivers convincingly on its early- and mid-game promise, while its endgame retains structural problems that EXBO has acknowledged but not resolved.

The Tulpa season, running until December 2, is EXBO's current effort to keep the live game active while that work continues.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to STALCRAFT?

STALCRAFT and its successor, STALCRAFT: X, were earlier names for the same game now called STALZONE. EXBO renamed it in June 2026, citing legal risks associated with the old name and the game's evolution beyond its original Minecraft-based origins. Development has continued since 2013. Existing progress, characters and accounts carried over without interruption.

Does STALZONE really wipe progress?

No. Persistent character progression is the game's central design premise. When players die, they lose the loot collected during that run, but equipped weapons, armour, faction reputation, character standing and other account progress are stored server-side and cannot be removed by an in-game event. Seasonal content such as the current Tulpa arc adds story material and limited-time rewards without resetting progression. This is the fundamental difference from Escape from Tarkov.

Is STALZONE safe to install given its Russian developer?

That depends on what "safe" means. STALZONE is not known to contain malware or security vulnerabilities. However, EXBO North, the core development studio, is based in St. Petersburg, and EXBO's privacy policy says user data is transferred to the Russian Federation. Russia's SORM framework requires companies operating there to provide the FSB with direct access to user data and communications. The information collected by EXBO includes IP addresses, device identifiers, in-game chat and connected social-account data. Players concerned about Russian government access should understand this structural condition before installing. A VPN and dedicated email address may provide partial mitigation.

Is STALZONE pay-to-win?

For the early and mid-game, the Steam community generally says it is not. EXBO sells cosmetics, a seasonal battle pass and progression boosters. Disagreement intensifies in the endgame, particularly in the northern territories, where players say long gear-grind times make paid acceleration competitively relevant. The game's sustained "Mixed" Steam rating, with 67% positive reviews, reflects that friction. EXBO describes its model as "honest free-to-play" with no direct power purchases.

Originally published on Tech Times