Today News How A Fire Threw Another Wrench In Stalker 2’s Development
The Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl developers at GSC Game World have been through a lot, to put it mildly. Following the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, roughly 200 developers opted to relocate to Prague in the Czech Republic, continuing to collaborate with their colleagues in Kyiv. This, in theory, should have led to a more peaceful development process for this group, but a large fire in the Prague office threw another unexpected wrench in its plans.
The fire, which broke out in late 2023 in the Prague office’s server room, partially wiped out one of the floors. No one was hurt, but post-accident images of the damage show scorch marks and ash covering the ground. GSC Game World CEO Ievgen Grygorovych seems to view the situation as a sort of blessing in disguise, as he explained to us in the latest GameSpot Insider documentary.
“It actually made us stronger because we got to experience what can happen, how it may look–what we have to do to not let it happen again,” he said.
There was certainly a material cost to the accident, though. In addition to the server on the floor being destroyed, developers’ work computers were also destroyed.
“It was one more challenge to rebuild this game again,” lead community manager Yevhen Bazarov said. “One more thing we weren’t expecting.”
While he’s able to laugh about it now, lead cinematic artist Ingwar Dovgoteles was working on a cinematic-department documentation job that took roughly three days. He had finished it late the night of the fire. About 15 minutes after he got home, he got a call from the office that everything he had worked on was gone.
“All my work was there,” Dovgoteles added. “[Done] in three days with all this documentation. It was just wasted.”
Fortunately for GSC Game World, despite yet another setback, Stalker 2 did eventually release in late 2024, and it was one of our picks for the best games of 2024. For more on how the studio continued to make the game as its home was invaded by Russian forces, you can watch the whole GameSpot Insider episode above.
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