There was so much interest in the game in war-torn Ukraine that GSC Game World essentially shut down the country’s Internet. 

Despite the fact that the developers moved to Prague due to the war, they are still Ukrainian developers, so the hype for the long-awaited S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sequel was quite high in Ukraine. Two ISPs, Tenet and Triolan, confirmed that so many people downloaded the game that they overloaded the network! In their case, at least, the download is understandable, since if you don’t have a physical copy, or if it’s dangerous to venture out of your house, it’s not only more convenient, but also safer to have a digital copy… 

“It was hard for the whole country, and it’s a bad thing because the Internet is important, but at the same time it’s like, whoa! For us and our team, the most important thing is that some people in Ukraine feel a little bit happier than they were before the release. We did something for our country, something good for them,” GSC Game World creative director Mariia Gryogorovych told Eurogamer. 

And studio head Ievgen Grygorovych talked about why S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was released in a slightly flawed state – they were simply tired of development: “You’re in a very intensive work process for many months until the release, and you’re working over, over, over what you can normally do and under the highest possible stress… You have no energy at all and you decide – should we run another marathon? You’re so tired that you would just die if you said let’s run another marathon. We didn’t have a chance to say let’s do another one. We only had a chance to say, ‘Let’s do as much as we can up to this moment-the release date.'” 

They’ve had 14 years of delays, and it wouldn’t have made sense for them to slip out during the Black Friday/Christmas period at the end of November… and has already received over 62,000 user reviews on Steam. These are 84% positive. “It’s not perfect, we have to fix everything, it has some problems, but it’s a game! It’s a game with soul, with feelings, with love. Even the problems, you can’t fix them if you don’t have a game,” Mariia Grygorovych added. 

And that’s honest on her part. 

Source: PCGamer