One of the most anticipated games on Steam, S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl, launched on November 20, 2024, with significant flaws. Nevertheless, it enjoys high player numbers and great ratings – what’s going on?
What’s going on with Stalker? S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl was released on November 20, 2024, after years of waiting. However, despite several delays, the developers apparently did not manage to eliminate all the bugs.
The survival shooter is in such poor condition that our Webedia colleagues from GamePro issued a purchase warning.
Despite everything, Stalker 2 with more than 100,000 concurrent players is currently one of the most played titles on Steam and is in a league with GTA 5 and Throne and Liberty. Additionally, there are players who are gaming through Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (via SteamDB, as of: 21.11.2024, 18:00).
Even more impressive is the rating of a proud 80% positive that Stalker 2 has achieved with over 13,000 reviews on Steam. How can this be?
Stalker fans defy bugs and jank
Why is this interesting? Gamers are usually not very generous when it comes to bugs. On the contrary: A common criticism of today’s game industry is that especially expensive AAA titles launch unfinished. At launch, these games are often penalized with mediocre ratings, which may eventually recover when time and patches have passed.
The prime example of this is probably No Man’s Sky. This survival game launched back then in the worst possible way and continues to struggle even 8 years later to win the trust and favor of players – with success.
With Stalker 2, however, the bugs and performance issues seem to have little impact on the rating.
What’s going on? This could partly be due to the fact that Stalker players are used to hardship. Bugs and jank are practically part of the gaming experience. In the community, hardly anyone expected a flawless release. Some might even feel nostalgic when they see the familiar bugs again – as one author did for the English website PC Gamer.
Another possible explanation is that many players have not yet had enough time to encounter the more serious problems of the game, as described by our colleagues at GameStar.
It is therefore quite possible that we will see a drastic drop in reviews by the weekend at the latest, as more people have time to delve deeper into the game. Unless the developers can keep their word and deliver some fixes by then.
The developers are aware of the problems and promise improvement. On the official X account, they state: “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a huge game. We understand that with such a game there are still rough edges: We have literally never released anything on this scale before.”
Accordingly, there will be a number of hotfixes in the first days after the release, and later they plan to transition to larger updates. In December, GSC Game World also wants to publish a roadmap that informs about the future of the game and upcoming content.
Even the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, which launched just one day earlier, had a difficult start on Steam; however, players were far less lenient here. You can read more about it on MeinMMO: Player rush is said to be the reason that a new game from Microsoft is failing on Steam
