From love to hate.
“Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl” is probably the most catastrophic game in the history of video games. Video games were originally a product of peace and development, but this game was born in Ukraine, caught in the flames of war that are still burning today.
Since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict began in February 2022, the production team GSC Game World has repeatedly postponed the release date of “Stalker 2”, and most developers had to move from the Ukrainian capital Kiev to the Czech capital Prague. At the end of 2022, the unfortunate death of a senior employee who volunteered for the Ukrainian army cast a shadow over the development work.
The pain and hatred caused by the war made GSC firmly support Ukraine in its political stance. GSC announced that it will not release “Stalker 2” in Russia, and has also removed the Russian localization translation and dubbing. In the external publicity, the English spelling of the subtitle of the game “Chernobyl” was also changed from “Chernobyl” in Russian spelling to “Chornobyl” in Ukrainian spelling.
The current expected release date marked on the Steam page of “Stalker 2” is December 2023
The “Stalker” series has an extremely strong fan base in Russia, and GSC’s helpless move also made Russian players feel the pain. Some loyal fans of “Stalker 2” in Russia developed feelings of love and hatred, and launched a retaliation against GSC in protest. And their method of protest was to leak the unannounced game content of “Stalker”.
In August 2022, there was a case of abolition of the Xbox version of the first work in the series “Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl” circulating on the Internet. The instigator of the leaked version is a Russian “Stalker” anchor, whose screen name is Nevazhno.
In an interview with foreign media PCGamer, Nevazhno pointed out that GSC’s social media and Discord channels expelled and banned Russian players, and also sent Russian players a request to donate to the Ukrainian army, which is tantamount to encouraging them to commit treason. He believes that these behaviors are discrimination against Russian fans, which is also the main reason why he chooses to leak.
Coincidentally, on March 11, 2023, the “Vestnik TSS” channel on Russian social media VK also published a leaked statement.
Vestnik means “herald” or “messenger” in the Slavic language family, and TSS is the abbreviation of “The Same Stalker”, which is “the same “stalker”.
Judging from past developments, TSS is not a professional hacker organization, but a Russian-language fan channel that focuses on sharing details and related news of various generations of “Stalker”. The founder and administrator of the channel calls himself Frost Nick
Nick), who called TSS a “Gazette” project, “one of the most mature and unique in the Stalker community”.
Research: The oxygen tank behind the stalker’s overalls in the game refers to the diving equipment of the Soviet Union in reality
According to the channel profile, the rules for community comments prohibit “illegal content” and “politics and political innuendo.” However, the channel is currently preparing to spread “illegal content” and engage in political issues.
TSS and Nick said in a statement that they have a large amount of unreleased information about “Stalker 2”, which is said to include complete stories, cutscenes, concept art and game maps, etc., and the volume is “calculated in tens of gigabytes”. This statement is accompanied by 10 images, including canon sets and in-game screenshots, used to prove the authenticity of this statement.
One of the leaked images shows a scene similar to the Steam page preview
TSS has no economic appeal, only political appeal. They will leak everything on March 15th unless there is a change in GSC’s official policy. The TSS also provided three requirements to the GSC:
One, change the attitude towards Russian and Belarusian players, “apology for the inappropriate attitude towards ordinary players from these countries”.
Second, re-adding the Russian localized translation and dubbing of the previous work to “Stalker 2”, “There is no need to destroy people’s games for political reasons.”
Third, unban the user “NF Star” in the official Discord channel of “Stalker 2” – this ID belongs to Nick himself. He claimed that the official channel banned himself “for no reason” without violating any channel rules.
The statement ended with a soft-spoken statement: “We have not provided all the materials to the public, which is enough to prove our friendly attitude towards you, even after your unfriendly behavior. Please take appropriate action and rectify the situation. Don’t Let the Stalker universe die because of your politicization – the development stall has been severe, it’s time to connect with the player community.”
On March 12, GSC also issued an official statement through the official Twitter of “Stalker”, indirectly verifying the authenticity of the TSS statement.
The tweet noted that GSC employees had used a collective image processing app whose accounts had been hacked and that “a Russian social networking community” had claimed responsibility for “blackmail and intimidation.”
GSC also mentioned that this kind of hacking threat is not the first time, in fact, cyber attacks targeting company data and personal information of employees have been going on for more than a year. “We’ve been through many more horrible things: homes destroyed, lives destroyed, loved ones killed. Attempts to blackmail or intimidate us are completely futile.”
GSC will not change its political stance, nor will it make any concessions or compromises. It just reminds players to avoid paying attention to spoilers. “In the event of any leaks, we ask that you do not view or spread information about it. This information is outdated, or work-in-progress material that may dilute the impression of the final ideas we put into the game.”
In response to GSC’s “hostile attitude”, Nick added another statement. He said that TSS’s request is not “blackmail” and “ultimatum”. They did not insist on meeting all three requirements, but only hoped that GSC will meet the needs of “all players”.
The negotiation has broken down, and Nick began to upload the art pictures that are said to be the concept design of the game without any scruples. He also threatened to upload 10G of content on March 15, and the rest “will be discussed later”. No matter how many things Nick will leak in the end, his statement has already attracted a wave of traffic for TSS. In just two days, the followers of TSS channel broke through from four figures to five figures, and rose to 14,000.
The pain of Nick and Stalker Russian fans is real, but leaks are not the best way to express protest, after all, the pain of GSC employees is also real. Hacking and data leakage not only bring a heavy mental burden to GSC employees and further increase the pain; they will also add to the misunderstanding of ordinary Russian players by GSC and others, and return the pain to themselves.
Making decisions based on pain just makes the pain endless.
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