“We just have to wait for Half-Life 3”: Steam users met S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 “very positive” reviews and a record peak online for the series

Although the post-apocalyptic open-world shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is available for release in the Game Pass subscription, the project of the GSC Game World studio turned out to be very popular on the Steam service.

Image source: GSC GAME WORLD

According to the SteamDB portal, on the night of November 21 – just a few hours after release – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl reached 113,587 concurrent players.

For the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series this result was a record (by a large margin). Until recently, the most popular game in the franchise on Steam remained S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl with a peak online of 2.3 thousand people.

The developers have already commented on the achievement: GSC Game World thanked each stalker, wished them a good hunt and reminded: “In the Zone, the journey is no less important than the destination.”

Since the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl received more than 8.8 thousand “very positive” reviews on Steam. The share of positive responses is 81% (the figure has increased from 75% at the release).

Users complain about optimization problems and bugs, but are happy about the long-awaited release. “Waited for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 after 15 years. Now we just have to wait for Half-Life 3,” said one of the buyers.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was released on November 20 on PC (Steam, GOG, Microsoft Store, EGS), Xbox Series X and S, and Game Pass. The game suffers from a large number of technical problems – the developers are aware of them and are aimed at eliminating them.