When someone kicks you out of the theme-park, you go build your own -- with blackjack and hookers -- and that's just what this team of developers, formerly of GSC Gameworld are doing. After the closure of GSC Gameworld and the uncertain fate of the incomplete S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the detached members of the Ukranian dev team have revealed a new studio, Forming Vostok Games -- named after Vostok 1, the first space apparatus to take man into orbit.
Their introduction explains that development of STALKER 2 halted in December 2011, and after unsuccessfully trying to secure the rights to continue that game or at least something else under the STALKER brand, they've announced a brand new game with a suspiciously similar theme.
Survarium will be a free-to-play MMOFPS set in a post-apocalyptic near-future and unlike STALKER's Chernobyl focus, the wastelands of Survarium are global:
Impassable woods advance onto cities from every side, maddened animals and birds attack industrial complexes, military structures, warehouses and power plants. Strange plants and mushrooms grow through concrete and steel. Scientists all over the world haplessly try to cope with the anomaly sprawling across the Earth with terrifying speed. Countries collapse, anarchy spreads throughout the world. Now force dictates who to survive.
Vostok is currently aiming to launch Survarium on PC "at the end of 2013" and you can watch their extensive introductory developer diary on the topic below (or click here for HD if the subtitles are too small).
As for STALKER 2 and the STALKER brand, despite rumours that Bethesda and other publishers may have been fishing for it, the official STALKER Facebook page claims that GSC boss and rights-holder Sergei Grigorovich "has not sold the IP rights to anyone".
Interesting, I literally just did a google search after reading about stalker online in PC Powerplay. I found a post stating stalker 2 was cancelled. The stalker online looks like it's being created by someone else (cybertime systems?).
Posted 02:30pm 26/4/12
Posted 03:14pm 26/4/12