On social media, posts have surfaced from ‘one of the most established communities in the STALKER community’, backed by Russian fans that are seemingly displeased with some decisions that have been made by GSC Game World, the developer of the upcoming STALKER 2. In these posts, it has been claimed that this community is in possession of 30GB of STALKER 2 data, and it’ll leak the content by March 15th if certain demands aren’t met.
With the posts themselves, the group of Russian ‘hackers’, going by the name of ‘Vestnik TSS’, shared a series of developmental images from STALKER 2, which has been in production for more than a decade. These images were dropped with a threat – make changes by March 15th or ‘tens of gigabytes’ of STALKER 2 data will be revealed.
What Do They Want?
Originally, the lengthy post aimed at GSC Game World was published on VK.com, with the Russian community – which is assumedly backed in some way by hackers – making some intense threats and demands.
Primarily, the group wants GSC Game World to ‘rethink its attitude towards players from Belarus and Russia’, and to reintroduce Russian localisation in the game. It was almost exactly a year ago that GSC announced it would be featuring no Russian voice acting in the game, and that it wouldn’t sell STALKER 2 in Russia upon release. There was also a change made to the game’s subtitle to remove a trace of Russian grammar.
There was also a demand made by the community levelled at GSC Game World’s Discord server. In this demand, the author of the ‘letter’ suggested that GSC should unban the ‘NF Star’ profile in the game’s official server, which was reportedly banned ‘for nothing’. It seems like a somewhat bizarre demand, nestled in among political and geographical concerns.
In the letter, it was summarised (translated):
Until the 15 March we are waiting for changes in the company’s policy towards adequacy and acceptance of your own fans, no matter where they come from, as well as the return of RU-localization, if not by release, then at least in the form of an add-on.
So, the Russian community will ultimately accept ‘RU-localization’ in the form of an add-on, which would be released following the launch of the game itself. Unfortunately, STALKER 2 has seen countless delays and postponements, mostly due to the war in Ukraine that has led to the death of at least one of the studio’s developers, which is something that was also addressed in the letter:
Don’t let the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. die because of your politicization – stagnation is already felt very seriously, which means it’s time to build relationships with the community.
It has been suggested that the ‘tens of gigabytes’ of STALKER 2 data that this group allegedly holds contains ‘a full story, cutscenes description, various concept art, global maps, and much more’. It would be a catastrophic leak for GSC Game World, a studio that has worked for more than ten years to bring this game to life.
GSC is yet to make a statement responding to these demands.
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