Since March 2023, Russian gamers have been blackmailing the Ukrainian studio GSC Game World, threatening to leak their new game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. In May 2023, Russian game communities are again discussing another leak of the game assets. Ukrainian developers are urging the game community to ignore it and wait for the official release.
- This time, stolen and unofficial game materials appeared again in the public domain. At the same time, Russian gamers promote the idea that the developers are “to blame” for mistakenly posting the encrypted build of the game themselves. They can’t reach a simple conclusion that even in this case the game should not be pirated.
- The developers themselves, the studio GSC Game World, appealed to the gaming community not to download the game before the release:
“Our team discovered a vulnerability used by a group of Russian hackers who have been attacking our company for over a year and a half. Unfortunately, they were able to access some materials and information that were intended to test various aspects of the game. We ask stalkers and those who wish to enter the Zone in the future to refrain from viewing and distributing these materials,”
the appeal reads.
- In March 2023, Russian “gamers” who blackmailed the Ukrainian studio GSC Game World and demanded an apology and to bring back the Russian localization to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, in response to the principled position of the company, indeed published 15 GB of leaked material. In response to this, the Ukrainian community decided to support the developers and began massively pre-ordering S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
