Stalker 2: Developer denies release delay

Last week, Microsoft began canceling pre-orders for the upcoming first-person shooter Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl and refunding buyers’ money. The game’s shop page has also been removed from the Microsoft Store. This step was justified by the company with a postponement of the release date to an indefinite point in time.

Originally, the game should have been released on April 28, 2022, before the release was scheduled for December 8, 2022 by the responsible developer studio GSC Game World to allow for fine tuning and further tests. However, due to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, where the studio is based, those plans were shelved – official stores such as Steam and GOG gave late 2023 as the release date for Stalker 2.

With the refunds for the Stalker 2 pre-orders, fans of the series now feared another delay in the game. GSC Game World has now denied these rumors when asked by PCGamer and announced that the first-person shooter is still planned for 2023. The date and a film sequence including further insights into the ongoing developments were already shown at the E3 Microsoft Extended Show. The cancellations are rather a general procedure by Microsoft, in which games are generally not made available if they do not have a specific release date.

According to the denial, no further postponement of Stalker 2 can be assumed, although the timing of Microsoft’s refunds is surprising. As the GSC spokesman also announced, the Xbox pre-orders for Stalker 2 should go live again as soon as an exact release date is announced. PC customers who ordered via Steam, Epic Games Store or GOG are not affected by the issue anyway.

Source: PC gamers