Founded in 1995 by Sergiy Grygorovych, GSC Game World is a developer based in Ukraine. Though the developer spent its first five years trying to gain the Warcraft license from Blizzard to make their own version of Warcraft 3, the team was rejected, and set out about developing their own title, specifically skewed toward the Western market. This eventually lead to the release of Cossacks: European Wars in 2001, a real-time strategy game that put GSC Game World on the map. The developer then began work on first-person survival horror game called STALKER, which much like its modern day sequel, STALKER 2, would take quite some time to develop.
In total, STALKER took about seven years to develop, with six of those coming after the game was officially announced. Unveiled in 2001, STALKER would be pushed back several times until finally releasing in 2007. GSC Game World's upcoming sequel, STALKER 2, is suffering a similar fate, as it was originally announced over a decade ago - all the way back in 2010. Since then, the developer has had to deal with a financial crisis, a series of failures, and an invasion from Russian forces.
STALKER 2's Troubled Development History
GSC Game World first announced STALKER 2 in 2010, via a personal statement from the developer's CEO and founding member, Sergiy Grygorovych. The CEO set a 2012 release date for the game, and announced that the long-awaited, fully-fledged sequel would use a brand-new engine, designed to bring the game to multiple platforms as opposed to just PC. While the first STALKER and its spin-off successors had reached over 4 million copies sold at the time, GSC Game World was still far from being a AAA studio, and STALKER 2 was already sounding surprisingly ambitious.
Over the next two years, GSC Game World would receive extensive layoffs due to financial difficulties, eventually resulting in the developer being 75% smaller than it used to be. GSC Game World was already a small team, and this drop in employees left them extremely overwhelmed with STALKER 2, a project that was already too ambitious for the team. Eventually, Grygorovych pulled the plug on STALKER 2 and made the tough decision to dissolve GSC Game World entirely, which was announced in December of 2011.
In June 2014, a new developer named West Games launched a Kickstarter campaign for a self-proclaimed spiritual successor to the STALKER series. Lead by one of GSC's former lead developers, Eugene Kim, West Games seemingly had some credibility upon first glance. But those who visited the Kickstarter's page soon discovered that the project wasn't quite as legit as they'd thought.
This project, titled Areal, only had one trailer to show potential backers, which was composed entirely of footage from the STALKER series. The game's supposed development screenshots were also just Unity store assets, leading many to believe that this project was a scam. Despite this, the project still raised its goal, surpassing the $50,000 benchmark, and raising $65,000. However, Kickstarter pulled the project, stating that it had violated the site's guidelines.
In December 2014, GSC Game World was reformed, with the express purpose of developing Cossacks 3. With the success of the game, the studio clung onto life once more, and in 2018, STALKER 2 was announced once again, this time using Unreal Engine 4. In the years that followed, GSC Game World would be approached by Microsoft, who would strike a deal with the developer to bring the game to PC and Xbox Series X/S exclusively. In 2021, a gameplay trailer for STALKER 2 was finally shown, and an April 2022 release date was announced along with the information that the game was swapping to Unreal Engine 5.
Earlier this year, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. Being a Ukrainian developer with its offices based in Kyiv, GSC Game World announced that it would be pausing STALKER 2's development while its employees attempted to aid the Ukrainian war effort in any way they could. Earlier this month, in June 2022, GSC Game World announced that STALKER 2 has resumed development, though the developer is currently in a fractured state, with some of its employees fleeing the country and others leaving to permanently aid the military effort. GSC is currently working on STALKER 2 from Prague, and the game has a 2023 release date.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is in development for PC and Xbox Series X/S.