Ground Branch hits v1.0 on July 16 after eight years in Early Access

Ground Branch — the hyper-realistic tactical shooter from BlackFoot Studios — is finally leaving Early Access with a full v1.0 release on July 16. The game has been in development in some form since 2007 and landed on Steam Early Access back in 2018.

The headline addition in 1.0 is the long-awaited campaign, or at least its opening act. The existing Operations mode — a collection of standalone missions — returns alongside a new prologue that sets up the story and leads into further chapters planned for post-launch. BlackFoot are also adding an Extraction mode, though not the battle-royale-adjacent kind currently everywhere: here you and your squad infiltrate a map, locate an AI hostage held by AI guards, and get them out alive. Move too loud and the guards may execute the hostage before you reach them. The studio's attention to detail is on full display in the patch notes, which dedicate an entire section to "a smoother, more responsive door system."

BlackFoot Studios was founded by John Sonedecker, an artist who worked on the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games at Red Storm Entertainment — the studio Ubisoft recently gutted, laying off all 105 of its game developers. Ground Branch has always been positioned as a spiritual successor to that era of uncompromising tactical shooters, and its 1.0 arrival feels particularly well-timed given how far Ubisoft's own franchises have drifted from those roots. The game's 2012 Kickstarter fell short of its funding goal but built a small, dedicated community that has kept it alive through Early Access.

BlackFoot say v1.0 fulfills the game's "core promise," but development continues — new single-player chapters and eventually a full mod kit are planned for the months after launch.