We can now thankfully confirm that GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has been a success.
As reported by The Gamer, GSC Game World owner Maksym Krippa revealed in a new interview in Forbes Ukraine that the game that took over a decade since its announcement is already profitable.
Forbes asked if Krippa believed that it could make $ 1 billion, and he replied:
“With DLC and releases on other platforms to come, we think we can meet, and perhaps even exceed, even the wildest forecasts.
The number of copies that we will be able to sell at the end of this journey is really unknown. I would not like to name any numbers, so as not to give a bad omen.”
As Krippa alluded to here, GSC Game World still has a lot of things in store for the game, including two announced DLCs and a multiplayer mode.
Krippa also mentioned that CD Projekt RED and their success with The Witcher inspired GSC Game World. In fact, they are already negotiating on a potential S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series to come to Netflix, just like The Witcher.
As we alluded to below, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was announced all the way back in 2010, and survived a seemingly impossible set of obstacles, including the literal closure of GSC Game World itself. But the biggest setbacks that it faced came as a consequence of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl launched last November 20, and immediately reached over 100,000 concurrent players on Steam. It peaked at 121,335 players on November 24. While the game launched with multiple technical issues, they were clearly not enough to stop them from selling over a million copies on its first day.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s success is the storybook ending GSC Game World deservers. It is also a vindication of Microsoft Gaming’s clout as a publisher, to be able to make this game a success on Xbox Series X|S and Windows platforms.
Microsoft may not have had GSC Game World prepare a PlayStation port for this game because the studio didn’t have the capacity to make it at the same time. While some observers will rationalize that the game could have done better launching on PlayStation 5, that would be ignoring the fact that it already became a success without that platform.
It certainly stands as an awkward contrast to Remedy Entertainment’s Alan Wake 2, which came to both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, but was still not making a profit a year after its release. We don’t share this example to disparage Remedy or Alan Wake 2, a much more critically acclaimed game that enjoyed a bigger marketing push. As we’re sure the industry takes notes between these two and other recent releases, they could not deny how impressive it is to reach this success outside of PlayStation.
We wish the best for GSC Game World, and look forward to what they have in store for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans in the future.
