The owner of GSC Game World Maxim Krippa recently spoke to Forbes Ukraine about their recently released title STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl, their long-awaited sequel in the STALKER series, which last saw a release in 2009. This was initially reported by ITC.ua with the conversation discussing both the profitability of the new title, as well as plans to release DLC in the future.
In this interview, Kappa talked about profit, stating:
We have already sold enough to make the project profitable. The team worked almost 24/7 before the release. They lived this project, especially against the backdrop of war. We wanted to give the country hope and pride, to show everyone that Ukrainians can make projects of such a high level.
Stalker 2 cost a large sum of money to develop, to the tune of tens of millions, with very little on things outside of core development such as marketing, according to this report. While the biggest market for the game has thus far been the United States, the game has also received a lot of success in their home country of Ukraine. It was in fact so popular there that it strained the internet in Ukraine.
Because of this success, Krippa went on to say that Stalker 2 will receive at least two expansions to the base game, as well as multiplayer, thanks to this success. No additional information was given on how the game will expand moving forward, but Krippa hopes that Stalker 2 can help raise the Ukraine gaming industry in a similar way to CD Projekt Red, whose The Witcher series helped put Poland in a more mainstream position within the industry.
Stalker 2‘s launch was marred with some mixed receptions concerning bugs that the title released with. Despite this, most critics acknowledged that beyond these rough patches, there was a great game underneath that needed patches to be fully realized. It is hard to find issues with this as the studio famously had to delay the game due to the war in Ukraine, which saw fire set to their office, as well as a majority of the team needing to move out of the country.
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