Developer GSC Game World announced earlier in the year that due to the invasion of their country, they would have to delay S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, but even with members of their development team fighting to free their country, the team are still hard at work on the game and they have a new update to share.

Before we get into that, I wanted to share the message from the developers, there is a video and a written message.

The life of our studio changed dramatically on February, 24, when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Over the previous months, we had to relocate from Kyiv to find new ways of continuing development and saving our lives and work. Our Ukrainian office is currently on hold, with employees working remotely from different regions of the country. Some of them are personally defending our country in the ranks of the army. The second office in Prague, Czech Republic was opened for those able to escape.

During all this time, we’ve been supporting Ukraine in all the ways we could — not to mention constant volunteering and donations GSC provides on a regular basis.

We decided to abandon a dedicated Russian voice-over and closed sales of all GSC games in Russia and Belarus (both physical and digital copies of the game), changed the subtitle to resemble the Ukrainian spelling, and left the donation requisites on our website for those willing to support Ukraine. We held a charity sale of our games at the beginning of April and were able to raise around $800K on all platforms. All of this money is intended for the proven charity funds across our homeland to support the country during one of the most difficult periods in its history.

For those willing to do the same all over the world, we recommend following a link to the official charity fund of Mr. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine himself: https://u24.gov.ua/

In spite of everything, the development continues. But the dramatic events could not but influence the plans we initially had. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl now releases in 2023 on Xbox Series X/S and PC.

Now here is the latest gameplay video for the game, with some stills taken from it below.

The game is coming in 2023, but there is no firm release date yet, but when it does it will launch on Xbox Series X|S and PC.