Forbes Ukraine interviewed gaming industry experts and estimated how much money GSC Game World can earn from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and whether the studio will be able to recoup the investment.
On the day of its release, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 became the absolute leader in sales on Steam, outselling all paid and F2P projects, as well as Steam Deck, which was in first place for the last few days, and in the evening the game reached a peak online of 113,000 players (and the first hundred thousand was reached in just 2 hours, and the game download caused interruptions in the Internet service of some Ukrainian providers).
The first game cost GSC Game World $5 million, while the new installment could have cost at least six times as much – $30-60 million, according to the founder of the NAVI esports team, Oleksandr Kokhanovsky.
«S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has the largest budget for a single game produced in Ukraine in the last 20 years», — Kokhanovsky stated.
Tomasz Koscielniak, an investment partner at Smok Ventures who focuses on investments in gambling, meanwhile, notes that Some estimates suggested a budget of about $100 million. However, in the case of a long-term project (as was the case with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2), it is not a given that investments will be recouped so easily.
Pavlo Borysenko, Head of Development at Eventyr Interactive game studio, that the game may well reach $100 million in the first year — if there are positive reviews from critics and no technical bugs on the release (Critics’ reviews were decent, but somewhat lower than expected, while Steam currently shows76% of positive user reviews out of more than 2000 in total).
«This plays a crucial role for success in the Western market,» adds Borysenko.
$100 million in revenue equals the sale of about 3-4 million copies of the game, Koscelnyak notes:
«This is not an impossible outcome, especially since the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games has a large group of fans».
Anton Bolshakov, founder of the game development studio AB Games and former project leader of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Anton Bolshakov believes that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 «will be the first game invented and created by Ukrainians to raise more than $1 billion in the world».
On Steam, the price of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 starts from 1400 to 2550 UAH, depending on the version, but it is difficult to calculate the potential revenue in this case, given that the developer has to pay a commission to the service. The terms of cooperation with Microsoft are also unknown, as well as agreements with the game’s publisher, which also receives a share of sales.
According to SteamBD, the game currently has about 1.5 million players on the waiting list. According to the calculations of Eventyr Interactive’s chief game producer Oleksiy Uslavtsev, this can be transformed into «about 500,000 copies sold within the first two weeks».