GSC says it couldn't delay Stalker 2 to fix bugs because 'one more marathon' might have destroyed the devs: 'It has some problems, but it's a game! It's a game with soul'

Scar looks ominously into the camera, face bathed in a flame's red glow.

(Image credit: GSC Game World)

Stalker 2 is great. Heck, it's my game of the year, and I said as much in my Stalker 2 review. But it also launched with a hell of a lot of bugs. To its credit, developer GSC Game World is cranking out patches at a dizzying pace, and they seem to be making a difference, but it does raise the question: why didn't the studio just delay the game?

In a chat with Eurogamer, GSC boss Ievgen Grygorovych said the reason was simple: it might have finally, totally broken the devs. "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… You have no energy at all and you decide—should we take one more marathon?"

The answer, of course, is no. "You're so tired that you would just die if you say let's run an additional marathon," explained Grygorovych. So the studio decided to finally ship the game it had worked on in one form or another—suffering delay after delay after delay—for 14 years. "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.'"

Of course, the other part of that calculation is that pushing Stalker 2 away from its end-of-November window also moves it out of that Black Friday/Christmas sales window, which Grygorovych also acknowledges. I have to imagine that the thought of delaying the game to fix it up further only to be rewarded with fewer sales for your efforts after over a decade of work and relocating from your home country due to a Russian invasion didn't really appeal.

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.