What just happened? Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl developer GSC Game World recently experienced a fire at its Prague office that destroyed one of three floors the team uses. Fortunately, nobody was hurt or killed but the damaged floor is a total gut job.
Eurogamer cited GSC's Discord channel and a discussion about the fire, which was confirmed by GSC's "Mol1t." According to the user, the blaze broke out last Thursday and is still being investigated. Mol1t thanked folks for their words of support, adding that they've dealt with worse before and that nothing will stop them from achieving their goal.
Stalker 2 has been a long time in the making. It was first announced way back in 2010 with a 2012 release date. GSC Game World hit a rocky patch and was officially dissolved at the end of 2011. The developer would return in late 2014 and four years later, announced that the game was back on and would arrive as the fourth in the series and the first since Call of Pripyat in 2009. A cinematic trailer dropped in mid-2020 and the following year, we learned the game would run on Unreal Engine 5.
In early 2022, we were told the developers needed an extra seven months to finish the game and that it would be ready to launch by the end of 2022.
The team has faced other challenges as well. In late 2021, the developer walked back plans to include NFTs in Stalker 2 following heavy backlash from fans. And in March of this year, Russian hackers threatened to release the game early if certain demands were not met.
As a Ukrainian developer, they've also been dealing with the ongoing war with Russia, further complicating work efforts.
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is slated to arrive on Xbox Series and Windows in the first quarter of 2024. Minimum and recommended PC hardware specs were shared in 2021 but they'll likely be outdated by the time the game finally ships.
https://www.techspot.com/news/100108-fire-stalker-2-developer-gsc-game-world-destroys.html
