GSC Game World has announced that STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has officially gone gold. This means the game is done, and a master copy has been sent for mass production (the game will be released on physical discs for Xbox, in addition to digital).
In theory, this means no more delays are in order, although there’s a famous precedent: CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077, which was confirmed to have gone gold on October 5, 2020, ahead of its planned November 19, 2020 launch date. However, on October 27, the Polish developer was forced to announce a short delay to December 10. The reasons would later become obvious, as even the delay was not enough to prevent a rough launch, especially on consoles.
STALKER 2 fans certainly hope this won’t be the case, both regarding the delay and the rough debut. After all, this game already had to suffer through a long and tough road to get here. It’s been over fifteen years since the last franchise entry, 2009’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat. The first attempt at a proper STALKER 2 project was immediately started by GSC Game World, which announced the game in August 2010 for a tentative 2012 release window.
However, the Ukrainian studio was dissolved in December 2011, inevitably leading to the cancellation of that project. Luckily, that wasn’t the end of the story. Evgeniy Grygorovych, brother of GSC Game World’s original founder Sergiy Grygorovych, successfully resurrected the studio in late 2014. After making the real-time strategy game Cossacks 3, GSC Game World returned to what it really wanted to do: make STALKER 2. The new announcement came in May 2018 with a targeted release window of 2021.
As time passed, the release was moved to April 2022 and then again to December 2022. But the disruption caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine forced work on the game to stop altogether for some time. GSC Game World subsequently went silent for a long while, and fans couldn’t help but wonder whether their long-awaited sequel would ever materialize.
Finally, a playable demo was brought to Gamescom 2023, and the developers used it to gather feedback and further improve STALKER 2. In early 2024, the studio announced that the game would launch on September 9, though we later discovered one final delay to the current date: November 20, when the game will be available on PC and Xbox Series S|X.
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