Stalker 2 is successful. Formally, it’s bought a million copies throughout PC and Xbox Sequence X and S, with many extra enjoying on Game Move. Stories popping out of Ukraine, the place developer GSC Game World was initially based mostly earlier than Russia’s full-scale invasion of the nation in 2022, point out Stalker 2 is already worthwhile. There’s even discuss of a Netflix collection.
However what does this success imply for GSC Game World itself and the way forward for Stalker 2? IGN interviewed GSC CEO Ievgen Grygorovych and artistic director Maria Grygorovych at BAFTA in Piccadilly, London following a screening of War Game: The Making of Stalker 2, to ask if Stalker 2’s massive gross sales have been a game-changer for the developer.
Discussing the influence of Stalker 2’s launch in English, which is clearly not their first language, Ievgen and Maria talked about how the studio now faces “a brand new actuality” and with it a much bigger viewers than it’s ever needed to take care of. The primary steps as a part of this new actuality will revolve round working to enhance Stalker 2 itself, one thing GSC has already finished with a number of patches, but additionally to increase its plans for continued help.
“It’s good to assume correctly as a result of we now have a very massive viewers and typically completely different components of this viewers wish to see various things,” Maria cautioned.
“So we have to reside now with this new actuality, with a reside group and speaking with them and attempt to perceive them perhaps deeper as a result of we actually wish to make our relationship good.”
Ievgen went into extra element, saying that whereas GSC’s plan for the event of future video video games stays unchanged, it plans to speculate much more in post-launch help of Stalker 2 than it had beforehand earmarked.
“Round 5 years in the past or perhaps six years in the past, we had a plan of what we have been going to do within the nearest 10, 15 years,” he revealed. “What initiatives we wish to do, how we’ll seem like. And all these years we’re barely updating this plan by simply transferring the dates ahead till we launch the sport.
“And so six years handed and we nonetheless wish to do the identical video games as we deliberate earlier and nothing modified. The one issues that modified is that we did not assume that we want to make investments rather more time in reside updates of Stalker 2 after sport launch, that we might wish to add rather more issues on this sport in reside updates.”
What does this imply for Stalker 2 and its gamers, then? Ievgen confirmed that GSC is now ready so as to add concepts it was compelled to chop from the sport earlier than launch as a result of they weren’t prepared, and even add new concepts which have sprung up within the wake of Stalker 2’s launch.
“We did not anticipate that we might return to bettering Stalker 2 for lots,” Ievgen defined. “And now we nonetheless have the identical plan for 10, 15 years of improvement of different issues we would like. But additionally placing rather more in improvement of Stalker 2.
“As a result of truly I really like the world we constructed. I nonetheless discover loads of issues that we are able to make higher and we wish to make higher. And now we now have gamers for whom we are able to try this, for whom we now have to do this. And for me it’s totally driving.”
These same reports coming out of Ukraine recommend Stalker 2 will get at the very least two expansions and even multiplayer, which can be one of many concepts Ievgen was speaking about. The hope, it appears, is that Stalker 2’s success might assist put Ukraine on the sport improvement map, as CD Projekt’s The Witcher 2 had finished for Poland.
Within the shorter time period, updates to repair points with Stalker 2 proceed, together with a much-needed patch that improved the essential A-Life 2.0 function. Beforehand, GSC defined what went incorrect with Stalker 2’s A-Life 2.0.
Wesley is the UK Information Editor for IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You may attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.