14 DAY TRIAL // Oleg Yavorsky, a current team member of Vostok Games and former developer on STALKER 2, says that his previous project was forced to close down and that no amount of effort on the part of the team managed to revive it.
The game creator tells VG247 that, “Back in December 2011, after GSC Game World was unexpectedly closed down by its owner and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 development was ‘frozen’. The team had two choices – scatter and start seeking employment elsewhere or stick together and try to secure some type of investment to continue developing the project we’re all so passionate about.”
He adds, “After several months of escapades and negotiations we secured the necessary funding. Then the problem with IP rights occurred as we couldn’t come to an agreement about using the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. brand.”
Yavorsky says that the STALKER 2 team tried to get more funding by creating a new game structure that would use a free-to-play model, but that that initiative also failed.
Unfortunately, the amount of resources required to create a STALKER Online was too high and the potential investors needed too much time to make up their mind, time that the team simply did not have.
The developer says that when STALKER 2 was finally canceled, the team had already created a complete graphical prototype, several game levels were already done and the team was busy hunting for bugs.
Apparently, about 2 more years would have been required to complete the entire project.
STALKER 2 was a highly ambitious project and many fans were disappointed to hear that they would never get to see the post-apocalyptic world that the team created.
The franchise took players to the exclusion zone around Cernobyl and used a first-person shooter structure that was also influenced by role-playing game and survival horror mechanics.