S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl already looks like a hit, with developer GSC Game World declaring one million copies sold.
In a tweet, Ukrainian studio GSC said that in addition to these sales, “much more” are playing via S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s day one launch on Xbox Game Pass, Microsoft’s subscription service.
“No wonder it feels a bit crowdy in the Zone,” GSC tweeted. “A million copies were sold, and much more stalkers joined the artifact hunt with Game Pass.
“This is just the start of our unforgettable adventure. The Heart of Chornobyl emanates stronger with each of us.
“Thank You, stalkers!”
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl hit the one million sold milestone less than 48 hours after launching across PC and Xbox Series X and S. On Steam, it has a peak concurrent player count of 117,928, putting it among the most-played games on Valve’s platform. Microsoft does not make Xbox player numbers public.
Clearly, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is already a success for GSC even before its first weekend on sale. However, the launch is not without problems, with players reporting a variety of bugs (check out IGN’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 review in progress to find out more). GSC has promised to sort out what it called S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s “rough edges” with a steady stream of patches.
Free in-game content is also coming to the game. Expect more on that when GSC Game World shares its roadmap later in December.
To help you survive in the Zone, we’ve got a list of Essential Stalker 2 Tips and Tricks, plus a guide on Things to Do First in Stalker 2 to help you through the early game, and Things Stalker 2 Doesn’t Tell You – everything we wish we knew before we started playing. Save time scouring the wasteland with our Artifacts checklist and locations guide, and every Stash location we’ve found so far.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 suffered a number of understandable delays, most recently in July when the game was due out in September. GSC said at the time that the extra two months would give the developers the chance to fix “unexpected anomalies,” aka bugs.
GSC has also been vocal about the challenges the studio faced getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 up to scratch after a mixed reaction to its debut public showing last year. At gamescom 2023, GSC addressed what some had called a “downgrade” sparked by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s then latest gameplay trailer. At the time, GSC told IGN it was still targeting a visual quality and level of polish suggested by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s eye-catching 2021 trailer despite the horrendous conditions suffered by the staff amid the war with Russia.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.