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GSC Game World
Fans had been patiently waiting for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl for 15 years, and when it finally launched, their happiness knew no bounds. Well, until they stumbled across a bug or two. Or many more.
GSC Game World had to swallow their fair share of criticism for the numerous issues the game had. While some would say the team should have delayed the release once more, GSC's boss Ievgen Grygorovych states it was impossible.
Speaking to Eurogamer, he revealed that the developers were exhausted and asking for another round would have killed them.
"It's very hard to explain your state when you're in a very intensive work process for many months until release, and you're working over, over, over what you usually can do and in the highest possible stress and overwhelming period," he said. "You have no energy at all and you decide – should we take one more marathon? And you just can't say yes, let's make one more marathon, because you're already broken."
GSC Game World
So with the release date approaching, GSC decided to launch the game in its best state and fix bugs later.
"You're so tired that you would just die if you say let's run an additional marathon," said Grygorovych. "We didn't have a chance to say let's do it more. We just had a chance of 'let's do until this moment – the release date – as much as we can.'"
I imagine working on one project for so many years and under the harsh conditions of the war is extremely taxing and continuing development would suck everything out of the team, so this was perhaps the best decision.
Despite the issues, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has Very Positive reviews on Steam, although, surprisingly, critics didn't appreciate it as much, based on the title's Metascore of 73 – a fact Raphaël Colantonio, the creator of Dishonored, found unfair.
"The Metacritic ecosystem encourages devs to make safe boring games. As long as a game is polished at launch, you’re guaranteed a 80%, no matter how boring the game might be. Meanwhile, Stalker 2 gets a 73 because it’s a bit rough on the edges at launch," he said.
"It's not perfect, we need to fix everything, it has some problems. But it's a game! It's a game with soul, with feelings there, with love there. Even the problems, you can't fix them if you don't have a game," Grygorovych concluded.
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