Defiant STALKER 2 Developers Say War in Ukraine, Russian Hackers, and Death Threats Won’t Break Them

01.09.2023 - 18:01 / ign.com

Maksym Yanchyi, lead Xbox programmer on Stalker 2, lets out a deep sigh. It’s not the first time Mak, as he’s called by his colleagues, steadies himself before revealing the horrifying difficulties the developers of one of the most anticipated shooters of 2024 face on a daily basis. Right now he’s talking about Russian hackers and their ongoing attempts to breach GSC Game World’s security systems, the constant harassment, and even death threats that have come from the theft of personal information.

“That’s a very bad thing,” he says, downbeat.

GSC Game World’s public relations manager, Zakhar Bocharov remembers one of the company’s first security breaches, which took place in summer 2022 and resulted in the theft of personal information, including mobile phone numbers. Anonymous death threats directed at staff are now commonplace, so much so that the people behind Stalker 2 have somehow got used to them.

“You go to your messenger and it's like, probably you need to look at something for work, even to check whether everything is okay in terms of your working tasks, and there is someone from an unknown number, like, ‘by the way, you should f***ing die.’ And then you're looking next for what you need to actually do today," Bocharov says.

Bocharov won’t go into more detail on these threats, but I can tell there are worse, even more worrying examples he could talk about. Such is life for the developers at GSC Game World, who are trying to build a video game in the middle of a war.

Stalker 2 is on Microsoft’s enormous booth at gamescom 2023. Here, for the first time ever, Stalker 2 is officially hands-on (check out IGN's Stalker 2 preview for more). The game is rough, but it is real. GSC Game World is back in the spotlight with a message of defiance.

“For us it's like a fuel now,” Yanchyi says. “Like okay, we have this problem, we'll solve this problem. And the more problems we had from the start of the full-fledged invasion, from the full-fledged war, the more the team became stronger."

“We taught ourselves to keep the shield,” Yanchyi continues, raising his arm above his head. “We are caring about each other, we are helping each other to find a new home in Prague or Ukraine. We are constantly Zooming with each other. Like, ‘how are you?’ Just these three words can matter to somebody today. Now we really understand through the experience that nothing can break our team, and we will deliver what we want no matter how many problems we have, because we have ourselves. And that's the point. That's everything we need to make what we want to make.”

When I bring up the war in Ukraine, I see a sadness overwhelm both Yanchyi and Bocharov. But they do not shy away from talking about what’s happening, however painful it