The Escape From Tarkov development team has announced that the ETS test servers are now available to everyone, and that all NDAs associated with them have been removed. At the same time a new update has been pushed to the ETS test servers that includes an engine upgrade and the controversial new aiming system.

The ETS test servers have long been a secretive invite only test bed for new Tarkov updates. Anything that requires extensive testing before being made public, or any updates that the developers wanted to get community feedback on before going live, have been tested on these servers over the past few years.

But chances are you will have never heard about the servers until the updates actually launch. That is because all content on them was tied to a pretty strict non-disclosure agreement that was only broken a couple of times.

However, the development team has now opened up the ETS servers to all Tarkov players, even those on Steam, and has removed the NDA, meaning players can stream and publish content on the new updates that are on there. That means you can jump in and test the latest Tarkov updates if you feel like it, although it should be noted there are limited servers so you may have long waiting times.

The move comes alongside the launch of a new patch for the ETS servers that bring some major changes. First off and perhaps the more important of the two, there is an engine upgrade with Tarkov moving to a newer version of the Unity engine. This should improve stability and performance improvements, as well as allow for new features to be added in the future.

The other big change is the rework of the aiming system. This update was teased on social media a few weeks ago, and the response was not positive to say the least. The version that was shown on social media showed some major changes to how you aim down the sights depending on your weapon ergonomics, with some animations looking somewhat comedic at times.

Now that update is playable on the ETS servers and the dev team is looking for feedback on it. Chances are it still feels great to play, as it would take a lot to mess up the amazing gunplay in Tarkov , but if you were worried by the social media videos then this is your chance to jump in and test it.

The Escape From Tarkov ETS server update also includes other changes such as improvement to player profiles and how trader standing data is handled, but that's certainly the least interesting part of this update. The real system to test is the new aiming system, and now that the servers are open to everyone I am excited to jump in and give it a go over the weekend.