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It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster of an opening day for Stalker 2 – but then again, its entire development has been far from plain sailing. First came some extremely varied critic reviews, then came reports of some pretty concerning performance issues and bugs, but spliced in between all of that is some immense popularity. Despite its issues, it is enjoying massive player counts on Steam, cementing itself as one of the biggest PC releases of the year.
While our own review of Stalker 2 is still in the works, today’s embargo lift painted a confusing picture, initially. Everything from perfect 10s to some concerningly low scores were in the mix, resulting in a Metacritic average of just 74. While there was almost universal praise for the remarkable environments and haunting atmosphere that GSC Game World has created, the main cause for concern was the technical state of the FPS game itself, with bugs and performance issues being widely reported. With the game in the public’s hands, countless similar reports are coming through.
This has now been acknowledged by GSC in a new post on social media. In it, the studio understandably looks back on the game’s incredibly turbulent development and expresses immense pride in its release, describing it as “a project of endless love and passion.” However, it also takes time to address the tech issues.
“S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a massive game. We understand that in such a game, there may still be rough edges: we literally haven’t released anything of this scale before. We’re absolutely committed to being here, monitoring your feedback, and quickly fixing any issues that need our attention. In the first days after release, we’ll be working with hotfixes, rolling them out as precisely as possible, but as frequently as we can. Then, we’ll switch to larger updates that include constant improvements.”
GSC also promises in its message that free in-game content will arrive in the future, with a roadmap set to be shared in December.
Even with all of the technical gremlins, hordes of players have been enjoying Stalker 2 on Steam during its debut day. Its peak concurrent player count has topped out at 113,587, with roughly 90,000 people still playing at the time of writing.
If you’re diving in for yourself this week, make sure you’ve got some of our guides nearby to help you survive. Here we give you everything you need to know about the best Stalker 2 guns, and here we show you how to get all the Stalker 2 artifacts.
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