Good guy GSC wordlessly deletes ads in Stalker remaster menus with itsy-bitsy new patch

An armoured trooper stands in front of the Chernobyl sarcophagus. — (Image credit: GSC Game World)

GSC Game World continues to juggle the patch process for four separate games in the wake of last May's release of the Stalker Enhanced Trilogy—the uprezzed remasters of the original X-Ray Engine games—which left it not only firefighting the myriad issues present in Stalker 2, but also handling the various fan disgruntlements around the new versions of the golden oldies.

Patches for the trilogy have been releasing at a fair clip, tackling stuff like blurry graphics (which only seemed to manifest for certain users), missing models, and other foibles. Now, a new patch has taken aim at the longstanding fan gripe of the ads in the games' main menus. Up to now, the remasters siloed off a little corner of their start screens to remind you that other Stalker games exist—even if you already own them. A bit like the ads Bethesda sticks in the top right of its main menus these days.

This was both slightly irritating and largely redundant. I can't imagine the number of people actively playing the OG Stalker remasters who didn't know Stalker 2 was out was significant, and it rankled fans who were tired of having marketing forced on them, especially in a space where there was no marketing in the non-remastered games. One of the more popular mods in the games' Steam Workshop was, of course, the one that removed them.

But as of patch 1.1.1, those mods are no longer necessary—GSC seems to have silently yanked the ads out without noting it in the patch notes. Which maybe it should have done, since without noting that the patch is honestly very boring indeed, consisting of fixes for various crashes and some other tweaks that are barely worth mentioning. No more ads, though? That's something to get mildly excited about.

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Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl main menu featuring an ad for Stalker 2. — Before.(Image credit: GSC Game World)

Just mildly excited, though. I'm often a little perplexed by the short fuse some folks seem to have when it comes to GSC Game World. Not around the major stuff: Stalker 2 was buggy as hell at release (though I still loved it), and it's only reasonable to be a tad miffed about that if you've forked over new-game money for it.

But to read the subreddits and forum posts, you'd think GSC was some mad bandit game company that kept hoodwinking its fans, which hasn't really been my experience as someone who's loved Stalker for over a decade and a half at this point. It's an odd one, but hey, maybe with more patches like this the internet will calm down a bit. I know, I'm an optimist.

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

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