14 DAY TRIAL // STALKER 2, the next installment in GSC Game World’s post-apocalyptic shooter series, may have been sold to Bethesda, according to a recent report that surfaced after the studio announced that it was no longer working on the game.
STALKER 2’s development cycle has been a troubled one, as at the beginning of the year its studio, GSC Game World, was close to being shut down by the Ukrainian authorities.
The developer then announced that things have returned to normal and that work on STALKER 2 continues, with an estimated release of later this year.
Yesterday, however, we found out that GSC Game World has essentially dissolved and the team formed a new studio called Vostok Games, whose first project is a massive multiplayer online first person shooter called Survarium.
As such, it looks like STALKER 2 has been scrapped altogether.
According to Kotaku, however, it seems that the rights to the series have been sold to none other than Bethesda, the developer of another successful post-apocalyptic series called Fallout.
The website found a statement that’s apparently coming from GSC owner Sergei Grigorovich, who said that the decision to scrap STALKER 2 came from the lack of interest from fans.
As such, the team scrapped the project and then sold it to Bethesda in order to start the new studio.
These details appeared on a Russian fan site of the STALKER series and, as of yet, haven’t been verified.
Bethesda, for its part, has declined to comment on this rumor and the STALKER 2 Facebook page has posted a message saying that the rights have yet to be sold to anyone.
No other details are known but, if there’s one company that knows how to pull off a post-apocalyptic shooter, it’s certainly Bethesda. The studio already developed Fallout 3, helped release Fallout: New Vegas, and published id Software’s Rage last year.