STALKER 2 developer has a serious answer to why the game comes with bugs

“It’s not perfect, we need to fix everything, there are some issues,” she said Eurogamer. ‘But it’s a game! It is a game with soul, with feelings there, with love there. You can’t even solve the problems if you don’t have a game.”

GSC Game World CEO Ievgen Grygorovych told Eurogamer in the same interview that he and his team decided to do as much as possible before last month’s release and then work on fixing what was left after launch, comparing another delay to running a running race at zero. energy.

“It is very difficult to explain how you are doing when you are in a very intensive work process for months until your release, and you are working again and again on what you can normally do and in the highest possible stress and overwhelming period, ” he said. “You have no energy at all and you decide: ‘Should we run another marathon?’ And you just can’t say yes, let’s do another marathon, because you’re already broken.

When it feels like people are giving STALKER 2 grace is not usually reserved for bad launches, but is likely due to the environment in which it was developed. Ukraine, the country that GSC Game World called home before it was forced to relocate, is still embroiled in a brutal conflict with Russia, which invaded the smaller country in February 2022. Many employees left Ukraine to develop further STALKER 2 elsewhere, while others stayed behind to work on the game under the constant blare of air raid sirens or, in some cases, take up arms to fight for their country.

Then, when STALKER 2 When it finally launched, the sheer volume of simultaneous downloads choked a war-ravaged Ukrainian broadband infrastructure. The developers just couldn’t win, but they’re finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

“It affected everyone in the country, but after its release it somewhat justified that even though we left our country and decided not to stay there, we still created something that could help Ukraine in some way,” said Ievgen. “We are artists, we are creative people, but it was our way of adding value to our country.”