Prior to Gamescom 2023 kicking off this week, a few weeks back on August 11th, GSC Game World’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 had a new release date listed on a few distributors, including Amazon Germany.
This listing came from a VGC contributor, Andrew Marmo who posted screenshots of release date on Plaion/Koch Media Store for S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2, which was set for a December 1st, 2023 release date. Marmo also included a day later a listing from Amazon Germany, which had the same release date that was on Plaion/Koch Media Stores. As Gamescom kicks off this week, GSC confirmed in a tweet on their S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Twitter account for in earlier in the month that the game will have a playable demo at the event from Wednesday to Sunday.
Unfortunately, these listings on both Amazon Germany and Plaion were soon adjusted to a release date of December 31, 2023, at the time of writing this.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chernobyl has been in development hell for a while now with an original release date of April 2022, then was further delayed again due to the Russo-Ukraine War that broke out early last year. Most of the GSC were located in Kiev, then moved to the Czech Republic. Some stayed to volunteering which was shown in a dev diary, which is heavy.
It’s also worth mentioning that it’s the 15th anniversary of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky which released all the way back on August 22, 2008, and the series is on sale on Steam right now for the Ukrainian Games Festival. GSC mentions this in their tweet on the first day of Gamescom where the demo will be playable for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Gamescom Hall 8.1.
If we do get a new gameplay and a trailer from Gamescom, hopefully, we get an official release date, but as of now, the game looks to have a place-holder title. Let’s hope to see more S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 gameplay on Wednesday!