The excuse was, they couldn't afford it, couldn't secure a console release and that's why. This seems to not make any sense for the following reasons;
The Stalker franchise sold 5 million+ copies over 3 games,
SOC (the first game) sold 1.7 million copies in its first year, the other two were more or less large expansions as opposed to new games with small features added/improved and bugs fixed.
The average wage in the Ukraine for someone working in a high tech industry is around $300-500 a month, which is only $3600-6000 a year.
The idea that they couldn't secure a publisher for the console version of a game that sold 5 million copies on the PC alone is utterly ridiculous. There must be many publishers out there who would like the chance.
The idea that a Ukraine based developer can't afford to develop another game with their average salaries and 5 million copies sold is also ridiculous.
So that leads me to conclude that something else has gone on here. Ukraine has a lot of political issues and there was some talk of the Ukrainian government taking of GSC and that's why it was closed. I'm not sure on that but there is this quote;
Sergey Galyonkin, marketing director at 1C Multimedia [1C Company published theS.T.A.L.K.E.R.games -
"GSC is closed, a fact confirmed by all. The team is almost completely dissolved, the state has only a few people,"
By the state, did he mean the government had taken over GSC as I'd heard previously or is this a mistranslation. I'm not sure.
Another quote I've heard about it is that this was posted"one member of law enforcement seized money". If there are any Russian/Eastern European members of this board it might be interesting to hear what they make of it?
Hopefully Stalker 2 will still be made, by some other company and perhaps in another country. I wonder whether that is the plan, better to dissolve it and go somewhere else if they were going to lose control of it.
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