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Agence France-Presse

Ukrainian video game studio GSC Game World will release the long-awaited new title in its Stalker series this week, having put it through months of fine-tuning during the Russian invasion that forced many of its staff to leave the country.
The post-apocalyptic first-person shooter game is set in a fictional version of the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was hit by a deadly accident in 1986.
The sequel, called Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, was first announced in 2010 and has been postponed several times.
The November 20 release marks the end of a long and chaotic journey for the GSC Game World staff, some of whom have joined the army while others fled to the Czech capital Prague as Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.


The game’s contaminated zone is filled with danger, where monsters and rival human groups run riot.
“The war affected our lives … [but] not the creative process,” chief executive Ievgen Grygorovych said in Prague.
Staff meet online, including a large weekly get-together for around 500 employees.
“Most have stayed in Ukraine, but we don’t feel like we have a split team,” Grygorovych said.
The Prague office includes three floors and a motion-pictures studio, all adorned with Ukrainian flags as well as spider webs, a Halloween leftover.
The 38-year-old Grygorovych, born only days before the Chernobyl disaster, joined the studio – founded by his brother Sergiy – when he was just 14 years old.

He describes himself as “a pretty good programmer, technical artist and game designer”.
“I’m introverted, and I didn’t like to spend energy by telling others what to do. So I learnt how to do everything myself,” he said.
But his expertise could not prepare him for the hasty exit from Ukraine, described in a documentary called War Game: The Making of Stalker 2, released in October.


Most GSC staff left for western Ukraine on buses just before the invasion and continued to Prague via Budapest, in Hungary.
“The invasion affected us and the game too, because we became slightly different people,” said Grygorovych, who fled with his wife – a musician turned GSC manager – their young son and other family members.
GSC has since severed ties with Russian players. In a BBC interview, a producer on Stalker 2 said the game’s Russian fans were unsupportive in the war’s early stage, leading it to remove Russian voice-overs in the new game and change text labels to Ukrainian. The game’s title was changed to “Chornobyl” to reflect how Ukrainians spell the name.
The studio has also been relentlessly targeted by Russian hackers, an “irritating but manageable thing”, Grygorovych said.
“We had to build a much better security system. But it had to be done anyway.”
GSC, which also produced the Cossacks series of real-time strategy games, raised over US$800,000 in charity sales for a Ukrainian organisation just after the war started.
Its Prague-based staff send money to friends, relatives and troops in Ukraine, while employees who joined the army are still on the payroll.
Stalker 2 will be released for PC and Xbox.

“Stalker” refers to trespassers in the game’s exclusion zone, which Grygorovych called “one of the most beautiful places on Earth”.
“[It’s] an abandoned place with a lot of tragedy” where nature takes over the drab Soviet-era architecture, he said.
“You can see a tree growing on top of a five-floor building … it’s so frightening and strange. A very unique experience.”
The game’s Ukrainian character is more contemplative and disillusioned than those in other shooter games created in the United States, Japan or elsewhere in Europe.
“We have a different culture, language, way of thinking, so the game is culturally different and played differently,” Grygorovych said.
GSC, which has sold over 15 million copies of its Stalker games, brought the first playable version of Stalker 2 to the Gamescom fair in Germany in 2023.
“The players who could play the game tell us that they can feel these old Stalker vibes and atmosphere, but it’s something completely new,” Grygorovych said.
GSC used the feedback to fix bugs, but Grygorovych said he was still driven by fear in the run-up to the release. “I want to be proud of what we all did.”
The original Stalker game – Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl – gave rise to a populous fan community that read Stalker novels based on the game and gather to re-enact the game with airsoft guns.
“You just create art and it may happen that it becomes popular like this,” Grygorovych said. “So we are lucky, I guess.”


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Ievgen Grygorovych, CEO of GSC Game World, sits in front of a Ukrainian flag at the developer’s Prague studio on November 8, 2024. Photo: AFP

Visitors play Stalker 2 game at the Xbox booth at the Gamescom video game fair in Cologne, Germany, on August 23, 2023. Photo: AFP

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Entertainment

Releasing on November 20, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s development was upset when Russia invaded Ukraine – most studio staff fled abroad


Releasing on November 20, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s development was upset when Russia invaded Ukraine – most studio staff fled abroad.


Ukraine

Ukraine war