It has been almost a year since the full-scale war became a condition of our developing process. About the insides of this challenging time — in the new interview with @wired
— S.T.A.L.K.E.R. OFFICIAL (@stalker_thegame) January 19, 2023
📌 Check it out: https://t.co/G046qmlWu9 #Stalker2 #GSC
Today, GSC Game World is a two-pronged company. While 130 employees are still in Ukraine—some of them on the front lines, defending their country—200 have relocated to Prague, which now serves as GSC’s primary headquarters, after an elliptical refugee trek through Eastern Europe.
The GSC employees who are still in Ukraine work remotely from their homes. Game development in a war zone can be close to business as usual—until the wild, terrible uncertainty of the situation rears its ugly head again. Zoom calls are constantly interrupted by air-raid sirens, and if someone is AFK for too long, Grygorovych can’t help but fear the worst.
Lately, Russia has increased its assault on Kyiv’s power grid and heating installations, so GSC coders attempt to squeeze as much work as they can into the scant few hours when the internet is relatively stable. “We have dreams of returning to our office in Kyiv, working as previously,” said Grygorovych. “Everyone wants to return home. But some people actually don’t have a place to return to. Each Ukrainian has lost something during this war because of Russia.”
Building a brand-new development house in a neighboring country is a long, formidable effort. GSC had a killer motion-capture studio in its Kyiv headquarters, which was abandoned when the company migrated to Prague. However, as of October, GSC’s new headquarters is operating at full capacity. When S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 arrives, reportedly sometime in 2023, it will be among the first full-throated statements of Ukrainian artistic expression to launch under the shadow of invasion.
“It was a game about Chornobyl, which is actually located in the Kyiv region, made by a Ukrainian team before the war, and it became something incomparably bigger after the invasion started,” said Grygorovych. “It’s a national product now, aimed to show that Ukraine is not only exceptionally effective and brave on the battlefield, but also equally valuable in a sense of cultural legacy. Something to be shown to the world.”
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