S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2

This will be the next chapter of the mega-popular game players expect from us." The development of the game was ambitious; it was stated that the game would feature an all-new multiplatform engine, made from scratch to fit S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. During development, numerous layoffs and overall attrition through the development of the game had shrunk GSC's employee count by 75%. However, the cancellation of this build of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 had been formally announced in April 2012 on the company's Facebook page, officially stated to have resulted from dispute between investors, staff, and the original IP rights owner. West Games, a studio founded by former GSC lead developer Eugene Kim, had launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for a spiritual successor to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise in June 2014, under the title "Areal". However, this drew widespread criticism and was described as a scam, with its trailer entirely composed of footage from the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games as well as purported screenshots from its development being revealed as modified assets from the Unity engine's "asset store", which West Games claimed was "media-fabricated". After cancellation though, West Games had at first claimed to have switched to private funding on their website to fund the project, they announced another crowdfunding campaign on the Wfunder platform in December 2014, setting a much larger goal of $600,000 to produce a new game called S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Apocalypse. After years of dormancy, GSC Game World was officially reformed in December 2014 to develop Cossacks 3. Four years later, on said game's Facebook page, development of a new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was announced, linking to www.stalker2.com, the game's website. Grigorovich later stated on a podcast that the intent of the project's announcement in 2018 was largely to generate hype, in order to strike a publishing deal at E3 2018. Little information was given regarding the project until E3 2021, where a full gameplay trailer was shown at the Microsoft/Bethesda press conference. In August 2021, the developers revealed that the game was updated to Unreal Engine 5. The game is planned to be on Xbox Game Pass at launch.