It has been confirmed that the office of GSC Game World was affected by an inferno on Thursday 7 September 2023. While no one was injured by the fire, property worth about 1.5 million crowns (over $65,000) was damaged. GSC Game World is best known for developing the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.
We first spotted the news on Vortex which said the fire affected team offices. The fire was blamed on an electrical installation. One of the three floors used by the studio was totally devasted and will need “complete reconstruction”. When fans started asking questions on Discord, GSC’s Mol1t confirmed the incident.
“It’s true,” Mol1t said. “Fortunately, none of the employees or office staff were injured in the accident. A fire broke out in our offices in Prague [on] Thursday. Even though the fire was successfully put out, one of the office floors now requires a full restoration. Further details of the accident are still being investigated.”
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GSC Game World is a Ukrainian video game studio founded by Sergiy Grygorovych in Kyiv in 1995. The studio was the first company in Ukraine to provide the Russian language as an option for PC games. Mol1t further thanked their fans for the outpouring of support since the incident.
GSC Game World partially moved to Czech Republic due to Russia’s invasion
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, GSC Game World was one of the companies that partially relocated from Kyiv. That has also affected their game release schedule. For example, the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was scheduled for April 28, 2022. However, by January last year, the company announced that it would be delayed until December 7, 2022.
Since then, the release date of the game has hung in the balance. Although the company partially moved to the Czech Republic, not all the staff left the country. Some continued to work on the game in the uncertain climate often dotted by loud explosions.
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Also, some of the company’s staff joined the country’s armed forces or volunteer efforts. In June, a development diary was released highlighting the war’s impact on the team and their work. Little wonder fans were pensive when the news of the GSC Game World office fire broke.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl now has a Q1 2024 release date. However, fans were worried that the fire incident may force the company to push back the game’s release date yet again. Mol1t had some words of encouragement on that thought.
“No anomaly, not even a “Burner”, will make us stop in our pursuit of our final goal,” Mol1t wrote. “We’ve dealt with worse than that before. This is fine.”
About S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will allow players to explore the dramatically changed Chornobyl Exclusion Zone after the 2006 explosion. The Zone has now been overrun by deadly anomalies, violent mutants, and warring factions that made survival in the Zone difficult.
However, people—called S.T.A.L.K.E.R.S.—could not resist the draw of the valuable artifacts that litter the Zone. Some enter the Zone with the hope of making a fortune while others enter the Zone with the hope to “find the Truth concealed in the Heart of Chornobyl.
Players will take the role of a lone stalker and explore a “photorealistic seamless open world in a 64 km square radioactive zone with a variety of environments that reveal post-apocalyptic atmosphere from different angles”. Once in the Zone, your destiny lies in your hands.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will feature a massive list of enemies and “hundreds of weapon combinations”. You will come across members of different factions and decide which of them will become an ally and those that deserve a bullet. The key to survival will be to try and outsmart your enemy.
If you are a fan of the game, it will interest you to know that the recommended operating system is Windows 10 and AMD Ryzen 7 3700X or Intel Core i7-9700K. In terms of size and memory, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will need 150 GB of storage space and 16 GB RAM.
You can preorder the game on Steam or on Amazon.
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