Reaching out to Insider Gaming, a representative for GSC Game World said the company didn’t want to respond to Grygorovych’s comments, but felt it was now necessary “as continued silence may be perceived as confirmation of information that is simply not true.”
The company says his claims don’t contain the facts behind the deal.
“In accordance with the agreements reached between the parties, Sergiy was not involved either in negotiations with partners regarding S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 or in the actual development of the game throughout its full production cycle,” they said. “We have always fully honored these agreements on our side. For this reason, his comments regarding the company’s activities cannot be considered an accurate reflection of the actual state of affairs.”
They continued:
“The development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 became one of the most challenging projects in the history of the video game industry. We believe the story of this game should be based on facts, not on assumptions or subjective opinions.”
GSC Game World says they are “sincerely grateful” to everyone who made the release of STALKER 2 possible, including players, partners, those defending Ukraine, and owner Max Krippa. Krippa, the company says, “funded the majority of the development budget.”
“We hope that such public statements will not distract attention from what truly matters to the team today,”
the studio said.
“GSC Game World is currently putting the finishing touches on a significant update for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, as well as its first large-scale story DLC. We will be sharing more details very soon.”
Relative to this :
It sounds like the guy wanted to steer some BS to get some attention. He launched his own studio making a new game called STRANGER with some STALKER devs… Come on.
I wasn’t following this story super closely but the claim was basically that Xbox grossly overpaid for the Game Pass deal for this game, right? So given this, it’s likely that Xbox didn’t in fact overpay?
It’s the older Grigorovich brother claim and he always seemed like an eccentric with some kind of a gambler life style. The youngest brother and his wife, who are now directing the studio, seem better fitted to handle everything, despite the circonstances that we all know of.
Even if Xbox overpaid, 1) Xbox would know by now, and 2) you wouldn’t reveal that information, knowing the consequences of that claim and how fast that rumor would spread.
It seems like there’s some brotherhood rivalry between the two, as even when you look at them, they seem like polar opposite, even though they share the same passion.
EDIT: In the video he said Xbox came to them when they saw the views from the teaser trailer of STALKER 2. Before that, the claim he clearly made is that Xbox paid enough so the game paid for itself from day 1, but it doesn’t mean that Xbox overpaid or that it’s even true. The interviewere also seemed pushy asking him 2 times about how “Xbox overpaid”, although the true claim is that “the game paid for itself”.
He also made some claim about how his brother and some ukrainian businessman (Krippa) invested in the studio so he got ejected. He claims he didn’t get paid for his work on STALKER 2 and he’s still waiting for some kind of compensation.
Commenting on STALKER 2 itself, he laughed and said it wasn’t a proper STALKER game for him, even though there was the atmosphere and the environment of the old games. For him, it didn’t have the soul of old STALKER games. So yeah, I think there’s a bit of lost in translation stuff with the “Xbox overpaid” and he’s not in good terms with the studio, that’s for sure.
I wouldn’t be surprised if sites are using some AI crap to make the “optimum title for clicks” at this point. This feels like something that’d be a thing now.
