STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has turned a profit, a senior GSC Game World official has confirmed. This crucial sales milestone was hit mere weeks following STALKER 2's release.
The latest entry in GSC's immersive sim series launched on November 20. Two days later, STALKER 2 had already sold one million copies, with the Ukrainian developer confirming as much in a social media post.
Reports indicate that STALKER 2's launch was so massive in Ukraine that it overwhelmed local internet providers, causing outages.
Two days ahead of the game's first-month anniversary, STALKER 2 is already in the green, GSC owner Maxim Krippa told Forbes Ukraine. While he didn't provide an updated sales figure for the game, he confirmed that the project itself had a budget in the "tens of millions of dollars." Publicly available LinkedIn data suggests that GSC has approximately 400 employees as of late 2024. Naively assuming this headcount was consistent since 2018—when STALKER 2 restarted development—and using Glassdoor's estimate of the average Ukrainian game dev salary being $36,000 gross per year, it's plausible that the game's budget was north of $80 million.
Taking the 30% storefront cut into account, GSC earns roughly $42...
