S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat Message Board

The sun is beating the UK into sweaty submission. Flowers are blooming, there is blue where there’s usually grey, and lollypops are the staple food source. Summer has finally decided to show up and make the world brighter and sort of happier, so this weekend I closed the curtains and spent my off-time fiddling with Stalker. I decided I wanted to pretty up the original game: I wanted pitch black nights, livelier fauna, blowouts, lovely skies, and more interesting weather. Unfortunately I’d forgotten I’d already modded it, so I ended up with a broken mutant of a game. I’m reinstalling now. It wasn’t at total waste: on my hunt for the Shadow Of Chernobyl mods I discovered that the long-awaited Misery 2.0 for Call Of Pripyat is out this month. And it has a trailer.(more…)

Those of you who have been following the saga of the demise of GSC and the subsequent death of STALKER 2 might recall that the property was held by GSC owner Grigorovich, while most of the original dev team went off to form Vostok and work on Survarium. Now, though, there’s been a new development, with this news from German publisher bitComposer: “bitComposer Entertainment AG has acquired the exclusive worldwide rights for future video game adaptations of the acclaimed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. brand from Boris Natanovich Strygatsky. This is the second strong international license that the Eschborn-based company has acquired within the space of a few years, and this move ensures that the successful series will continue.”

More details will apparently appear “shortly”, although it’s not entirely clear what rights are held here – given that the Stalker brand held by the authors is different from that held by the game creators. (And this perhaps rubbishes previous rumours that Bethesda had acquired the rights.) Quite who will make this new game, though, will be the burning question. Thanks to the huge flashing array of IM windows which lit up to inform me of this news.

Russian blogger and marketing man Sergey Galyonkin – who tipped off the closure of the STALKER 2 project earlier this year – has claimed that Bethesda now have the rights to make a publish a STALKER game. They also apparently have rights to the extended universe. GSC owner Sergei Grigorovich has not sold the brand, but apparently Bethesda could now make a game based on the property with their own technology. We’ll report more on this as we get it.

This follows on from the closure of STALKER 2 earlier in the year, an event which culminated in Ukrainian spin-off studios such as Survarium devs, Vostok.

We’ve contacted Bethesda for a statement.

“The Stalker team is extremely happy! Why? Because we are continuing work on Stalker 2 after the holidays.” That makes me extremely happy too. That’s the official line from GSC, although it’s not quite as simple as that. Speaking to Edge, the studio’s Oleg Yavorsky reveals that “We are still in the process of seeking funding to back up the project. We are hopeful things turn out well eventually.” Which still sounds pretty precarious, but given the situation last month was that the studio and the game were flat-out closing down, it’s still a good day for Stalker fans.

Let’s hope they find a funder in time. Anyone got a few million bucks to spare? Notch, are you reading this? Alternatively, have I got any long-lost billionaire uncles who’ve been waiting for an excuse to get in touch with me?

A surprise Christmas present from GSC, at which there appears to remain some life despite the awful news that they (and with them Stalker 2) had apparently been shut down earlier this month:

“Dear Stalkers: We will not be releasing any official news until around mid January. However there is cause for hope! Good hunting!”

That is all. But that is something. And it’s the second claim that all might not yet be lost in as many weeks, meaning the rescue operation is hopefully bearing fruit. Good luck, brave Ukranians.

The sudden apparent closure of GSC GameWorld and death of Stalker 2 is, for me, the saddest gaming news of this year, and a whole lot of other years to boot. Jim eloquently summed up why over the weekend. The waters of explanation remain deeply muddied however, so all we can do is hope that some glimmer of life emerges from the ruins. We got a small hint of that earlier, with the GSC Twitter account suddenly offering “We will do our best to continue. However, at this moment, nothing is certain.” (more…)

With the news that iconoclastic Ukrainian developer GSC Gameworld has closed its doors, putting the future of the Stalker series in jeopardy, thoughts turned to the games they had made, and the hopes we’d held for a sequel. There are a few reasons why the Stalker series is so important in the greater scheme of gaming, and as of 2011 those reasons seem more pressing than ever.

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Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, creators of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, have reportedly shut down. The details regarding the closure are currently very s.k.e.t.c.h.y. UkraNews reports, citing sources, that CEO Sergei Grigorovich told the staff in a meeting this morning that he had decided to close the company. GSC is said to have had between 40-50 employees.

RockPaperShotgun, which has been on top of this story, got in touch with GSC and obtained the ominous: "Sorry, no comments at this point."

STALKER 2 was expected to launch sometime in 2012. We'll update as more information becomes available.

Update: Details are still a mess, but it appears GSC has been shuttered.

UPDATE: GSC deny the report on their twitter here.

ORIGINAL: According to this report from Ukrainian news site UkraNews, GSC has been shut down by owner Sergei Grigorovich. The closure was apparently announced to the workforce earlier today. The autotranslation is messy, so if anyone can explain the sixth paragraph – which tries to speculate on what was going on – accurately, that would be great. I’m going to see if I can get in touch with someone from GSC.

So I’ve finally got around to installing the Shadow Of Chernobyl “mega-mod”, Narodnaya Solyanka. It’s a tangled compilation of Russian-language add-ons, put together by a Russian team, which has been roughly translated into English by enthusiastic bi-lingual Stalker-fans. The translation is interesting. Overall, though, Narodnaya Solyanka provides us with a vast amount additional content, including new maps, maps pulled in from the other games, and a daunting radioactive salad of minor Stalker mods. It hugely expands the size of the zone, and reportedly adds another several hundred hours of missing-driven content. It is also a bizarre and off-putting experience, as my initial dabblings have discovered. “It all gets better after the cave,” is the mantra that appears across various Stalker forums. And they’re right. Because the cave is a horrible mess. What lies beyond, however, is intriguing…

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Popular Stalker mod series Complete has arrived at its third iteration, with the completion of Call Of Pripyat Complete. Complete hooray! The mod overhauls the visuals, the audio, the AI, the UI, as well as adding a bunch of other features such as the sleeping bag (for sleeping anywhere), and the fate of stalkers caught out in the emissions. There’s a trailer below. It’s rather pretty, in a bleak sort of way. You can completely download it here. (more…)

Two parts of GSC Game World's eerie FPS series -- set in an alternate-reality Chernobyl following a second nuclear meltdown -- can be yours on the super cheap. Both the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and follow-up S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat are bundled together for only $10 on Steam through Monday. (The S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky prequel game is not part of the bundle; but it's is available separately for $10 on Steam.)

The full-on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 sequel was recently announced and scheduled for release in 2012. While that gives you plenty of time to get to caught up, this weekend Steam sale might just be the excuse you were looking for to book your first trip to Chernobyl. That whole nuclear meltdown incident made it quite a lovely place for scavenging, trespassing, adventuring, loner-ing, killing, exploring and robbing. See what we did there?

Thrills and chills in one of the scariest settings around.

bitComposer Games announces international release date for the first person shooter.

Experience the deserted ruins of Pripyat, Ukraine from the comfort of your own home.

All new gameplay vids.

No other game feels quite like this.