The Ukrainianized sequel to Stalker 2 is among the world leaders in the video game market

The video game “Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl” by Ukrainian developers was ranked third in the ranking of the most popular video games in the world by TrueAchivements after its launch last week.

The publication in Finacial Times calls it one of the most anticipated games at the end of 2024. Stalker 2 pushed down famous video games that had long held the top spot. In the first three days after the launch, the company sold one million copies of the game. The game recorded the simultaneous participation of 117,000 players, making it the most successful Ukrainian game on the platform.

According to Heidi Nicholas, a technical editor at TrueAchievements, the top ten most popular games rarely change. Therefore, the fact that a “new game immediately entered the top three” is a significant achievement.

The game is part of the Xbox subscription.

“The quality is truly exceptional, and I’m proud of the partnership,” said Phil Spencer, head of Xbox Game Pass. “I believe this title will make it onto the list of favorite games of the year for many players.” In an interview with Game File, Spencer discussed Xbox’s most promising new releases to capture gamers’ interest ahead of the Christmas season.

Meanwhile, TrueAchievements reports that the developers of Stalker 2 are already addressing initial bugs identified by players and are planning to release the first post-launch update for Xbox soon.

What’s the Game Actually About?

The plot of the game is that after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, another nuclear explosion occurs in 2006, after which mutants appeared in the “exclusion zone”, anomalies in the atmosphere, and supernatural phenomena occur. The player plays the role of a Scythian exploring the exclusion zone.

“The main pleasure of the game lies in exploring a vast world that is both dark and beautiful, where human factions compete for dominance among the radioactive ruins reclaimed by nature. It wants you to feel the tension of barely surviving as you endure hunger, blood loss, and fatigue,” that’s how the Financial Times describes the game.

“Heart of Chernobyl” is the fourth game in the Stalker franchise, its release 15 years ago was called Call of Pripyat. The original Stalker sequel was planned for 2012, but it was suddenly canceled at the last minute. In 2018, the development of the game resumed, and a new release date was announced for 2022.

Problems with Delays

The full-scale Russian invasion caused further delays in the release of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. By the time the invasion began, developers Yevhen and Mariya Hryhorovych had already been working on the sequel for four years.

At Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, on August 23, 2023, visitors were seen playing Stalker 2 at the Xbox booth. The story of how Ukrainian developers evacuated their team during the Russian invasion and supported the Ukrainian Armed Forces was detailed by the Financial Times in an article titled “Ukrainian Developers of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl — Work Helps Us Stay Sane,” published on November 26.

According to the article, the development team faced significant pressure even before the invasion. Fans of the game had waited 15 years for the sequel, eager to return to its radioactive zone filled with mutants and mercenaries, where survival is the ultimate challenge.

On February 24, 2022, the world of Stalker 2 became a grim reality for the team. Just four days before the full-scale invasion, the Hryhorovychs successfully relocated 183 employees from their Kyiv office to Prague. Meanwhile, around 140 staff members chose to remain in Kyiv to continue their work.

In an interview with FT, the developers stated that employees who joined the military or became volunteers were not dismissed; the company continued to pay their salaries.

“We’re loading weapons with one hand and making the game with the other,” said Volodymyr Yezhov, one of the developers in the documentary War Game, which chronicles the making of Stalker 2. Yezhov, who had worked on previous titles in the series, tragically lost his life in combat near Bakhmut in December 2022, as noted by the Financial Times.

Maria Grigorovich told the FT that the developers had to make some minor but important changes in Stalker 2.

For example, the air raid siren sound was replaced in the game. Originally, the game used a real air raid siren sound that is used in Ukraine. However, due to the war, this sound can cause emotional trauma for Ukrainian users, so the developers decided to replace it.

Stalker 2 is based on the 1972 novel Picnic by the Side of the Road by the Strugatsky brothers and the 1979 film adaptation of Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky.

In addition, although previous versions of the game were in Russian, Stalker 2 will not be released in Russian, the developers assure. Also they got rid of all Russian voice acting and changed its name from the Russian “Chernobyl” to the Ukrainian spelling “Chornobyl.”

When the owner of the company was asked if he was trying to make a statement about his own Ukrainian identity with this game, he said that he had never thought about national identity.