How Stalker 2's Launch (Literally) Broke The Internet

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornoby has enjoyed a generally positive overall reception, despite launching with a few issues. But Stalker 2 released to near-unanimous praise from players in Ukraine, the country in which the game is set and the homeland of its developers. In fact, Ukrainian players were so eager to get their hands on GSC Game World's latest entry in the Stalker series that the game's launch quite literally broke the internet.

Ukrainian players flocked to the game as soon as it launched, resulting in nationwide internet outages in the hours after its release, GSC creative director and executive producer Mariia Grygorovych said in a recent interview.

"It's a bad thing because the Internet is important, but at the same time it's like, 'Whoa!'" Grygorovych said of Ukrainian players' enthusiasm for the game. "It touched everyone in the country."

Grygorovych and the rest of the development team at GSC dealt with some truly harrowing experiences during the creation of Stalker 2, including a fire at GSC's studio caused by Russian shelling, and the death of colleague Volodymyr Yezhov, who lost his life fighting Russian forces. Russia's invasion of Ukraine added an enormous amount of strain on the studio and its developers, some of whom ultimately made the difficult choice to leave their home country to continue working on the game in safety. Currently, GSC Game World's staff is split between two locations: an office in Prague, and one in Kiev.

The complicated (and often heartbreaking) story of Stalker 2's development is detailed in a documentary created by its developers. Entitled War Game: The Making of Stalker 2, the film documents the immense hurdles GSC devs faced as they fought to finish the sequel to the iconic Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. But Stalker 2 was a labor of love, and Grygorovych says the sacrifices were worth it.

"For us and our team, what's most important is [that] for some people in Ukraine, they feel a little bit happier [now] than they were before [Stalker 2's] release," Grygorovych said of the game's significance in Ukraine. "We did something for our home country, something good for them."

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