GSC Game World is closed, officially. 1C’s Sergey Galyonkin offers more info here, if you can stand the piteous Google translation. Truly a sad day. Good luck to all of GSC’s former employees.
Confirmed: GSC Game World Shuts Down
11 Responses to Confirmed: GSC Game World Shuts Down
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Awfully sad news if it turns out to be true. Hopefully a new studio can rise from the ashes. They are a talented bunch.
Damn this generation to hell. If somebody compiled a list of all the studio’s we’ve lost post 2005 I reckon it would make pretty grim reading. It sometimes makes you wonder just where the industry is heading (and if the answer to that question is Angry Birds, I’m bailing outta here).
Then again, as you mentioned, there could be more to this. S.T.A.L.K.E.R is hardly an insignificant or struggling franchise.
I’m actually yet to properly play a S.T.A.L.K.E.R game despite owning Call of Pripyat and Clear Sky, but I’m acutely aware of the studio’s talent’s and contribution to the industry with those games. This is sad news, for sure.
Oleg Yavorsky owes me a drink, he said so himself, but even so I’m not surprised that I haven’t heard back from him on this matter. Plus it’s like 10pm there right now so he may just not be around.
The strangeness and abruptness of this story is what’s confusing. As far as I know GSC had plenty of money. One biz site is saying the founder, Sergei Grigorovich, shut the place down because he was dissatisfied with STALKER 2’s progress; that explanation is completely out of character for the studio. Besides, “unhappy with progress” is a reason to reassess and change direction if needed, not shutter the whole damn place.
There’s more to this story, but we may never find out what it is.
Where this industry is heading is bullshit content and video games such as Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare. I won’t for a single second spend a penny on bullshit like it and support an industry that is on its arse.
@ Steerpike, I hear some Ukrainian overlords were prying into getting a hold of GSC and so Sergei Grigorovich shut it down to prevent the crooks getting a slice of the pie.
Ukraine’s a dangerous place, yo.
Coincidently, I’ve just noticed another user asked the same question as I did regarding the studio’s who have closed this gen on NeoGAF, and someone created a partial but incomplete list in response:
Frightening.
Sergey Galyonkin has posted a much better English translation of his own blog entry, which I’ll just copy/paste here:
It is incredibly inaccurate to claim or even imply that 4A Games “created” the original STALKER. 4A didn’t even exist at the time. Seven or eight GSC employees, including lead engine designer Oles Shishkovtsov, left GSC prior to the original STALKER’s launch to found 4A. While I would not devalue Shishkovtsov’s role in the development of the X-Ray Engine, to suggest that his new company “created” the original is incorrect.
Business. Just business.
That is one sad day for gaming as a whole.
“STALKER 2 was going to become PC exlcusive, which isn’t a great future for story-driven game.” – maybe if you want to make bazillions of dollars… but if you want your company to get enough money to continue doing great games if think this is awfully wrong!
If that’s true about no publisher picking up Stalker 2 for consoles … unbelievable … that none would put faith in such an innovative franchise.
*sigh*
Shares in THQ have absolutely plummeted this week following the spectacular failure of that U-Draw tablet nonsense.
Obviously with success stories like that and Homefront, they’re just one example of a publisher which knows what it’s doing and knows how best to pick it’s products.
Wow, not a good day when a talented developer house like GSC gives up. 🙁