Developer Endnight Games has announced that it is making a bit of a change to its Sons of the Forest release plans. Namely, the game will no longer be launching as a full product but rather that of an Early Access title. As for why this is happening, the Steam Blog revealing the change states:
"It's been a long journey since we first started 'Sons of The Forest' development and it's grown into the biggest most complex game we have ever made. There is still so much more we want to add; items, new mechanics, gameplay balance and more. We didn't want to delay again so have instead decided to involve the community in the continued development of this project and keep our February 23rd release date but instead release in Early Access."
As is mentioned in the statement, this will still mean that Sons of the Forest will be playable come February 23, but that it won't be the 1.0 launch version as we were expecting. As for when the actual launch is set for, there is no word on any date as of yet.
