On March 11, the administration of the VKontakte group called “Bulletin of the same Stalker” informedwhich has access to “a huge amount of materials on STALKER 2”, and threatened to merge them if the developers – the Ukrainian company GSC Game World – do not agree to “rethink their attitude towards players from Belarus and Russia.”
The administration of the group claims that they have a full-fledged plot of the game, a description of cut scenes, various concept art, global maps and many other data that “count in tens of gigabytes”.
They began to threaten the developers to leak all the information received about the game to the public if they did not fulfill a number of conditions. Among them:
- “to come to your senses, rethink your attitude towards players from Belarus and Russia, apologize for the unworthy attitude towards ordinary players from these countries”;
- unban the NF Star profile (owned by the group administrator Nick Frost) in the company’s official Discord;
- return the Russian localization of the game.
The group’s administrators demanded that the Ukrainian studio make a decision by March 15. But the company responded to blackmail already on March 12 – on the official Twitter page of the game appeared refusal of developers to comply with the demands of blackmailers.
The company explained that the Russians gained access to the game data by hacking the account of one of the employees. At the same time, GSC Game World added that this was not the first hacking attempt – the entire last year the company was subjected to hacker attacks and blackmail.
“We are a Ukrainian company and, like most Ukrainians, we have seen many much more terrible things lately: our destroyed homes, crippled destinies and the death of loved ones. It will not work to intimidate us like that. Blackmail, too. Our principled position regarding support for Ukraine remains unchanged – We will continue to do everything in our power for our native country,” the statement said.
The developers have asked the gaming community not to distribute leaks, as outdated materials may distort the impression of the final version of the game.
After the announcement of GSC Game World, the administration of the “Herald of the same Stalker” group began to leak concept art of the game’s mutants, as well as models of some characters. The GORDON publication does not publish them, guided by the request of the developers, and urges Ukrainian players not to distribute these leaks either.
GSC Game World is a Ukrainian developer of computer games, known, in particular, for games from the Cossacks and STALKER series
In 2018, the continuation of the cult game STALKER was officially announced, the game received site and the official title is STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl.
After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the company took a pro-Ukrainian stance: published in his YouTube video about the war, and a post appeared on the game’s website calling for donations to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The developers also changed the subtitle of the upcoming game from Heart of Chernobyl to Heart of Chornobyl to reflect the Ukrainian, not Russian, spelling of the region. In addition, the localization of the game in Russian and the release of the game in Russia were cancelled.
