With the war in Ukraine, the life of GSC Game World was upset. The Ukrainian studio had to be relocated to continue the development of STLAKER 2 in Prague (with all the same part of the team which remained in Ukraine), which greatly disrupted the development of the game. An understandable postponement followed, with only the mention of a release in 2023. And if we could perhaps hope that the title would come out at the beginning of the year, we have to believe that this delay could be longer than expected.
An even further postponement?
This is at least the conclusion that one can draw when learning refunds of pre-orders by Xbox. It was the XGP site (relayed by VGC) that noticed this, and showed that Xbox had made this decision as the game was pushed back to an indefinite date at this time.. Pre-orders would thus begin to be deactivated everywhere, in particular on the Microsoft Store.
An unusual decision, which takes into account the exceptional nature of the situation of the game and the studio. STALKER 2 will be late, that’s for sure, maybe even more than expected, but that’s very little when you see what’s happening for the teams and the Ukrainian people.