Scavengers ditching Twitch key drops, will be available to everyone May 1

Scavengers
(Image credit: Midwinter)

Free-to-play battle royale hybrid Scavengers had a bit of a rocky start in Early Access this week, due to issues with servers and Steam keys. Keys could only be claimed by watching streamers playing the game Twitch, and some viewers never got theirs. Also, Scavengers actually ran out of Steam keys to distribute. There were, as there often are with new games, some server crashing issues as well.

So a bit of a messy soft launch, but sounds like the server issues have been resolved, and even better, players won't have to watch Twitch streams or keep checking their inboxes for a key. Scavengers enters Early Access properly tomorrow, May 1, and it'll be available to everyone with no key needed to unlock it.

See more

It's an abrupt change of plans—just yesterday the developers said they might "move off keyed access" at some point, but now it looks like they've committed to flinging open the doors. Starting Saturday at 9 am PT / 12 pm ET / 5 pm BST, Scavengers will be available to everyone. Fingers crossed the servers hold up.

If you haven't played yet, or you have played but want some extra info on how it all works, there's a new 'gameplay deep dive' video below. You can also check out our own Scavengers tips guide and our Scavengers crafting guide

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.