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Steam users can currently pick up the narrative-based 2D adventure game The Deed: Dynasty for free. Gamers who want an engaging story title to enjoy over the holiday season should take the chance to add this game to their Steam libraries. Players shouldn't wait around, though - The Deed: Dynasty is only free to claim until December 25, but once it's added to a Steam account, it's there forever. View the full article

The next Japanese Pokémon TCG set has officially been revealed. Nihil Zero is due to release in Japan on January 23rd. It highlights Zygarde, the legendary ****** and green dragon and ground type, who is also the mascot of the recently released game Pokémon Legends Z-A. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: It looks like the Pokémon TCG is scaling up US card printing - but not for three years More of Ascended Heroes' Secret Rare Pokémon cards have surfaced, and by Arceus they're gorgeous These 26 year old Pokémon cards' prices have spiked up to 842% thanks to Fossil Fever View the full article

The Chilling Wingback Evolution is now live in FC 26, and you can complete the upgrades to improve a card of your choice. The evolution costs 40,000 coins to unlock, but offers some massive boosts to your chosen card. Let's look at the best possible choices based on the offered upgrades and requirements. Table of contentsFC 26 Chilling Wingback Evolution requirementsFC 26 Chilling Wingback Evolution upgradesBest players to use in Chilling Wingback EvolutionFC 26 Chilling Wingback Evolution requirements Here are the requirements of Chilling Wingback Evolution in FC 26. Overall: Max 86Positioning: Max 64PlayStyle: Max 10PlayStyle+: Max 1Not Rarity: World Tour Silver StarsPosition: LBNot Position: CBFC 26 Chilling Wingback Evolution upgrades The evolution has five levels of upgrades, each with certain conditions to fulfill. Level 1 upgrades Overall: +14|88Long Passing: +25|84Short Passing: +20|84PlayStyles: Jockey|7Roles: Falseback++ Level 2 upgrades Pace: +15|92Slide Tackle: +35|88Strength: +30|85PlayStyles+: Jockey|1PlayStyles: Anticipate|7 Level 3 upgrades Ball control: +20|84Vision: +25|85Weak Foot: +1|4PlayStyles: Quick Step|7Roles: Wingback+ Level 4 upgrades Aggression: +35|87Crossing: +20|86Interceptions: +30|88Stand Tackle: +30|86Roles: Fullback++, Inverted Wingback+ Level 5 upgrades Agility: +20|82Balance: +25|86Dribbling: +20|81Jumping: +20|80Def. Awareness: +25|85Stamina: +25|93 Level 1 upgrade requirements Play 1 match in Squad Battles on min. Semi-Pro difficulty (or Rush/Rivals/Champions/Live Events) using your active EVO Player in game. Level 2 upgrade requirements Play 2 matches in Squad Battles on min. Semi-Pro difficulty (or Rush/Rivals/Champions/Live Events) using your active EVO Player in game. Level 3 upgrade requirements Play 1 match in Squad Battles on min. Semi-Pro difficulty (or Rush/Rivals/Champions/Live Events) using your active EVO Player in game. Level 4 upgrade requirements Play 1 match in Squad Battles on min. Semi-Pro difficulty (or Rush/Rivals/Champions/Live Events) using your active EVO Player in game. Level 5 upgrade requirements Play 1 match in Squad Battles on min. Semi-Pro difficulty (or Rush/Rivals/Champions/Live Events) using your active EVO Player in game.Best players to use in Chilling Wingback Evolution Here are some of my best recommendations for inclusion in the evolution. Savona TOTWLeila Ouahabi Joga bonnitoJulian RyersonYuri BerchicheHailie MaceTaylor Hinds ShowdownKarl CenturionsEmily Fox While the upgrades are significant, you will be able to include these cards in future evolutions to create a chain and evolve their stats further. Unfortunately, the positional requirements of this evolution make plenty of good cards ineligible. The post Best players for FC 26 Chilling Wingback Evolution appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

If you've played New Vegas, you're familiar with Caesar's Legion. Slavedriving, overtly fascistic, and wrapped in the aesthetics of the Roman Empire⁠—but with football pads instead of lorica segmentata. It seems like the kind of faction that would be hard to present as anything but one-dimensional, abject evil... Read more.View the full article

Bethesda is reportedly overhauling The Elder Scrolls 6 engine, with support from Microsoft and plans to integrate select Unreal Engine technologies. That's according to a new report from a well-known insider, who also shared additional details about the purported project and talked about how they all connect to the next chapter of Starfield, which Bethesda is expected to launch well before the Skyrim sequel. View the full article

Helldivers 2 Design Director Niklas Malmborg has confirmed that Arrowhead Game Studios has plans to expand on vehicle gameplay in a future update. Although it sounds like nothing is planned for the immediate future, it seems as though vehicles in Helldivers 2could be looking at an overhaul at some point. It does feel as though vehicles are underutilized in the game at the moment, so this presents a unique opportunity for Helldivers 2 going forward. View the full article

ARC Raiders, as a PVPVE game, attracts loads of different players, both those who love engaging with robots and those who are more keen on human blood. In such an environment, a lot has to be taken into account for the sake of matchmaking, as you'd want hardcore players to meet their kind more so than those of a casual demeanor. But does ARC Raiders truly have an aggression-based matchmaking system, analyzing your behavior whenever you ****** up? Here's everything we know. ARC Raiders' aggression-based matchmaking, explained Do not kill everything you see, folks. Image via Embark Studios Embark Studios has been generally unwilling to give out too much information regarding how it matches players, and does not even provide official numbers for how many players can connect to a single match at a time. This makes sense as it obscures the system, thereby reducing the odds of players manipulating it for their own gain. However, ARC Raiders devs did recently comment that they do take your behavior into consideration for matchmaking, and third parties, too, have found this to be true. More casual players will be matched with other casuals more often than not, whereas aggressive trigger-happy folks (who are on the rise) will find themselves surrounded by like-minded individuals where no amount of “Don't Shoot!” pleas can help. So, to answer the question: it's inconclusive, but Embark Studios does seem to analyze the whole of your behavior, including aggression and trigger-happiness, seeking to match you with players of a similar profile. Naturally, this will vary depending on whether you're solo, duo, or in trios, as it's likely party-based matchmaking works differently than solo ******. In a party environment, I suspect the game calculates your overall, hidden “behavior score,” and places you in a server that, overall, corresponds to your combined profile. This is theoretical, of course, as we do not have official information. Other games like Dota 2 take a similar approach, albeit that game openly states what the behavior score of your party is. The post Does ARC Raiders have aggression-based matchmaking? Everything we know appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

Rumors continue to swirl around what Hogwarts Legacy 2 may have in store for players, and a recent job listing by Warner Bros. Games seems to indicate that competitive online multiplayer will be on the way for a Wizarding World sequel. The original Hogwarts Legacy was one of the best-selling games of 2023 and remains one of the most-played titles across gaming platforms, so it should come as no surprise that another gaming entry for the Harry Potter franchise is on the way. However, some fans may be surprised to hear just how different a sequel may be from its predecessor. View the full article

If the terrifying rush of technological advancement has you craving a return to the days of yore, the best medieval games are a great escape. From character-focused adventures like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, through the all-encompassing spectrum of Medieval Dynasty, to the infrastructure-led Manor Lords, there's plenty of choice. But I've also got my eye on Noble Legacy, which is still in its early access journey but is making strong strides in the right direction with each patch. The December update has just arrived, and it's packing in so much that developer Studio 369 recommends starting fresh to experience it all. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: This gorgeous new pixel-art MMORPG with vibes of '90s classic Tibia comes from a solo dev, and it's free to play Clair Obscur Expedition 33 stripped of IGA's Game of the Year gong as its generative AI use comes under inspection Forget Payday 3, the free heist FPS that's won my heart just got an explosive update with a new harbor raid DLC View the full article

Given that Vivi Ornitier was banned in Magic: the Gathering's Standard format more than a month ago, you may have thought that you had seen the last of the small but mighty spellcaster. Well, for better or worse, that's not the case, and Vivi's returning with a vengeance thanks to the Final Fantasy scene boxes. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Magic: The Gathering teases a white version of Liliana, and the story implications are huge Jurassic Park MTG card doubles in price after spicy new Lorwyn mechanic debuts Old Walking Dead MTG card shoots up in price by 960% thanks to The Last of Us View the full article

It’s still a dangerous world. If anyone beat the odds in gaming in the past year, it was the developers GSC Game World in Kyiv, Ukraine. After seven years of work, they managed to ship S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: The Heart of Chornobyl on November 20, 2024. The game about monsters and scavenging humans in the dark zone of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site in Ukraine turned out to be a real success. In the first 36 hours, the game sold more than a million copies. On November 6, the game shipped on the PlayStation 5 game console. And last week, on December 18, the company published the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Stories Untold content update. What was amazing, and what is amazing still, is that GSC Game World managed to ship its game in the midst of a devastating war and support it to this day. The project was fully disrupted when Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale war on February 24, 2022. Russia had attacked before in 2014, seizing a couple of territories. But this was a war for control of all of Ukraine, and the war continues to this day. The Untold Stories update of Stalker 2. Source: GSC Game World Electricity still goes out in Kyiv and elsewhere in the country, making ongoing development so much harder, according to my interview with GSC Game World leaders Ievgen Grygorovych, CEO of GSC Game World, and Maria Grygorovych, creative director. Missiles still rain down regularly on the city and the winter conditions are difficult. I spoke with the husband-and-wife team at Gamescom last year, and we spoke again in the past week to get a postmortem on the game launch. Stalker 2 had a lot of bugs when it shipped last year, but the team stayed with it and fans showed patience as they understood the difficult circumstances of making game during a war. Some of the developers had to leave to go to war, and others fled outside of Ukraine. The team is still heavily concentrated in Ukraine, but it also has team members in Europe and the Czech Republic. Yet the team continues. And because of that, Ievgen Grygorovych and Maria Grygorovych remain an inspiration for us all. They have been able to ship their game, fix the bugs, hold on to their staff of about 500 people and continue with other projects as a multi-game development studio. It was gratifying to interview them again, and I continue to take pride in being able to tell their story of struggle and inspiration to the rest of the world. Their story was told in Microsoft’s documentary, War Game: The Making of Stalker 2. Some history Ievgen Grygorovych, CEO of GSC Game World, and Maria Grygorovych, creative director, are next to Phil Spencer of Microsoft in the second row in this early photo. Ievgen’s brother Sergiy started GSC Game World in 1995 as a company that localized games to the Russian market. It went on to create the Cossacks series of games, and it began developing and publishing its own as well as third-party games. Ievgen joined the company in 2001. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl came out in 2007 and it was a success as a first-person shooter. It combined ideas from the novel Roadside Picnic with the real world disaster of the Chornobyl nuclear meltdown, positing that this created a Zone where hunters known as Stalkers could go to find anomalous treasures. But they ran the risk of running into enemies including monsters unleashed by the radioactive contamination. Two more Stalker games came out in 2008 and 2009, but none was called Stalker 2. In fact, the prior CEO, who was Ievgen’s brother, asked him to make Stalker 2 and Ievgen said no because he didn’t think the team was ready to take on such a big project. The company announced Stalker 2 in 2012, but that team never finished and it was rebooted altogether later on. Ievgen eventually relented. “It was a crazy business decision to start this project, but we were sure that we would do everything possible,” Ievgen Grygorovych said in our interview last year. Abandoning earlier directions, they created a plan and built a new team. They worked on getting the script right from the start. After six rewrites, they finally started moving forward. [Hidden Content] Even without these external challenges, the game was ambitious, even for developers who had been working on games for decades. The team started with new technology. They came up with a list of tasks and broke it down into hundreds of thousands of tasks, Ievgen Grygorovych said. By the end of the process, many of their family members lost loved ones in the war. One Stalker 2 developer, Volodymyr Yezhov, was killed in the war with Russia. In December 2022, he died in a battle near Bakhmut, defending the city from Russian attackers. GSC Gameworld has made numerous donations to cause of Ukraine and it solicits funds from visitors to its web site as well. During all this time, they never considered shutting down the game. They felt like a responsibility toward their country to get it done, to put Ukraine on the map of the game development world. It continues to be a hard road and the longest journey. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview. Maria and Ievgen Grygorovych of GSC Game World, maker of Stalker 2. GamesBeat: Can you start with an update on how STALKER did in the market? Ievgen Grygorovych: We just released the PlayStation version. We’re very happy with the reception of the game. It’s a 92% score if we scale it, so the reception is good. Our players have liked the updates, the new features added and the performance gains. We’re getting very positive reactions this month. It’s great. Our next point will be releasing one more big update with the Story Untold. I haven’t checked the reactions yet, but it’s a lot of content there at just the right time, right before Christmas. Overall we’re happy with how the reception is changing, how the game scores are changing. We look forward to next year and the upcoming DLC, as well as other updates we’re going to release. GamesBeat: Did the PlayStation version represent a lot of work for the studio? Ievgen Grygorovych: It includes all the updates from the last year, so it’s very different from the release we had on PC and Xbox. The game quality is totally different. We also worked a lot on specific platform features that the PlayStation adds. The game feel with the controller is totally different. It’s a much more immersive experience. Maria Grygorovych: For me, because I read so much of the internet all the time, all the comments on different platforms, I’ve been so happy to see that a lot of people think that the game is getting better and better. They’re interested in the game. They want more. I see a lot of signs that they really love our game. This is the most important thing in game development: is the player really enjoying your game? That means you did something right. Maybe not perfect, but it’s right. GamesBeat: What changes have you seen in the comments since a year ago? Maria Grygorovych: A lot of them were afraid that the bugs would still be there, that we wouldn’t finish working on it. They were surprised by how many things we were able to add this year. If you read about these kinds of things all the time, you start to recognize certain people, the really vocal ones who post a lot of messages all the time in different threads. Even someone who was a hater at one point, now they sometimes say that it was pretty good, that they’re replaying it now. It’s understandable that you’ll always have players that are unhappy. It’s okay. We’re all human. But even the angry ones start to be nicer, that’s a sign you’re doing well. That won’t happen without work. The dangerous world of Stalker 2. Source: GSC Game World GamesBeat: The game did launch with some technical issues. How long would you say it took to work through those and fix most of them, so that the game was operating more smoothly? Ievgen Grygorovych: The biggest change was almost a year after the release. If I remember correctly it was November 7. We released a big update. That’s the point at which we totally changed the perception of the game. Previously, everyone saw that we were on the road to changing STALKER. But that was the moment where–people didn’t expect such a huge difference. They didn’t see a lot of impact on the optimization side before that, but this update was very big. Digital Foundry did a review and highlighted how big the changes and optimizations were. It’s nice that we could do more than people expected. Maria Grygorovych: We added a lot of new things, too. It wasn’t all about fixes. If we were only focused on bug-fixing, it would have happened much faster. But because we really wanted to add more features, more nuances, big story updates–that’s not something we need to do. But that’s something we really wanted to do for the community. They want to see that. Without that, bug-fixing is a lot of work, but it’s much easier if you’re not also adding anything new. If you add something new you always get more bugs that you need to fix. Ievgen Grygorovych: It’s very hard to make the game better if you’re not getting feedback from players and not iterating. A lot of games that have huge success, like Baldur’s Gate or Hades, they go into early access and iterate on player feedback. Hundreds of iterations to make it perfect. But a game that has a story full of secrets, you can’t share the story with the internet. For some games it’s impossible to get that much feedback early on. Now we’re getting feedback with each update. We’re iterating and making changes. Whenever you make changes, if it’s something big and significant, it might break something that was already working. Everything is interconnected. It’s a systemic game. If you change one system, it’s connected to others that might break. We’re constantly building features and fixing things before release, but even so–players don’t see 95% of the bug fixes we do while we’re developing. All this year, the game has been in full development. While we’ve been working on the full DLC, there’s a big part of the team there, but it’s still a lot of work. GamesBeat: Are you happy with how the sales have turned out? A very realistic gun in Stalker 2. Source: GSC Game World Ievgen Grygorovych: Overall, we’re happy. In game development it’s very rare to be as happy as you want to be. You don’t have many cases where you have an unexpected success and so many copies sold. We wish that the market had been in a better state. For our next project, we’ll have a much better situation. Also, when we released STALKER 2, it was our first release on consoles. Console players didn’t know much about the game. Because of Game Pass, we could reach millions of players who tried our game and knew about our game. For our next game, they already know us, so that’s a huge benefit for our next project compared to this one. Maria Grygorovych: We reached a million copies in 36 hours. That was pretty good. That was one public number we put out there. With our situation, without a big publisher–we self-published a product for the first time on consoles. It’s very different from some of the other developers out there. In our situation we did a really great job. If it was possible to release the game in a better technical state, I think it would have sold even higher. GamesBeat: You made the game under very difficult conditions, during wartime. I hope some of that has improved. Maria Grygorovych: Now it’s even worse in some ways. We have extremely big issues with electricity all over the country. Sometimes you can have two to four hours of electricity per day. It’s very hard. A ******* part of our team is in Ukraine. In Europe we have a smaller part. There are regular missile and drone attacks, usually at night. If you can’t sleep at night, you don’t feel well at all. You have much less productive time. It’s part of our job, something we deal with every day, but it’s still hard, still horrible. We still can’t help our people enough. Ievgen Grygorovych: No one is complaining, among our employees. They’re just taking it as it is and trying to work. We’re complaining to you, but our people are not. GamesBeat: Do you think the attention that came from things like the documentary helped the game draw more awareness, or otherwise do better in the market? Maria Grygorovych: I don’t think so, honestly. We can’t be 100% sure. But it was still extremely important. I’m so grateful to the Xbox team that did that. It won an award for best digital documentary. It was a very good film. For a lot of people–they didn’t understand what it’s really like here. The film made it more real for them. It’s really hard. It’s not only something on the news. Terrible things are happening on this planet, but for a lot of people it’s just statistics. Something is happening somewhere else. But if you see it in a documentary, any documentary, you can see people and what they’re feeling. You understand that this isn’t just a picture. It’s real people who are struggling, who feel a lot of different emotions. It’s important to share. It’s something true. It’s tough to be in the zone. Source: GSC Game World Ievgen Grygorovych: For us it was important not for sales, but for bringing visibility to what’s going on. It can have a butterfly effect. If we can affect someone and they affect someone else, it may have changes and impact we can’t foresee. It’s about our responsibility as citizens of Ukraine more than it’s about our business. Also, I know the documentary had an effect on people in the media who watched it. They started to understand our situation better and emphasize us more. They were thinking about us. This was something real to them. GamesBeat: It’s hard to quantify, but I do believe that telling the story of the studio and having the documentary go out there was helpful for people to understand how game development isn’t separated from the rest of the world. It was good for awareness of Ukraine’s cause, I think. Ievgen Grygorovych: It’s also important for players to understand that games are made by people. When we read things like Reddit and the Steam forums, people often forget that games are made by people who have feelings and emotions. They think of corporations producing the products that they play. When you forget that there are also people behind these games, you start to be not a player, but a consumer. There’s a loss of humanity. I think it’s very important to be human on all levels. Even if you’re just a consumer, you still know that this work is done by humans. Maria Grygorovych: It happens from both sides. Sometimes some corporations don’t seem to feel that their players are people. They do things just for profit, without any real feeling about what they’re doing and the people it affects. It’s only my opinion, but I think caring for our fellow human beings–it’s a worldwide problem. It’s not only between developers and players. It’s a big issue around the world. Ievgen Grygorovych: It’s about values, both on the corporate and the human level. GamesBeat: I do hope that even if these things don’t make a difference when it comes to sales of the game, it makes you feel good that your story of struggle and perseverance was told to a wider audience. Maria Grygorovych: For us, what was important wasn’t so much about our struggle, but getting the story of the war out to a ******* audience. It wasn’t easy for us to do, because we shared a lot of our stories, private ones. That’s not something that we really like to do. But we agreed to do it because we thought it would be helpful to show people how much damage Russia did to Ukraine through our small example. The radio is misbehaving in Stalker 2’s big update. Source: GSC Game World GamesBeat: There’s inspiration in continuing on despite all of that difficulty. There may be people who feel like giving up, but they can take inspiration from people who don’t. Ievgen Grygorovych: The biggest impact we made, I think, was the release of STALKER 2. It had incredible success in Ukraine. It had an impact on people’s morale. Everyone knew that we released the game. They knew it was very hard to make. It was a nationwide success, for everyone. We know that a lot of people in the military were waiting for it and happy to hear it released. The support of the Ukrainian people was 100 times more than we expected. Maria Grygorovych: We have stories, real ones, where some of our soldiers who were prisoners of war, after they were repatriated to Ukraine, they said that one of their only bright moments when they were in prison was when they heard STALKER 2 released. That’s really something, that they felt happy in this terrible situation. This idea that we did something that helped so many people feel better–that’s why we work in this industry. Ievgen Grygorovych: They don’t need to play the game. It’s enough that it happened, that players loved it. It wasn’t just about playing the game. It was about knowing that it happened. GamesBeat: What are you thinking about the future of the studio and what you’re going to work on next? Ievgen Grygorovych: We’re starting to be a multi-project company. We’re transitioning from doing just one project internally to several. We’re not ready to announce any details yet, but we’re going to release a game based on existing IP and a game based on new IP. We’re also considering–DLC 1 is a separate project. DLC 2 is a separate project. We’re also working on the multiplayer project. It’s a lot going on at the same time. Some of these projects will be huge. It’s possible because we have a very big team. You don’t need to have such a huge team when you get started on a new project. In the pre-production phase you just need a very small team. But we don’t want to lose everyone. We’re starting to do several projects to keep everyone allocated. Stalker 2 took almost seven years to make. Source: GSC Game World GamesBeat: Have those projects been underway for a long time, or are they more recent? Ievgen Grygorovych: Most of these projects, we first planned to do them seven years ago. They’re things we’ve wanted to do for a long time. The vision of these projects over the years has sometimes changed and sometimes not. It’s not something new, but it’s something we’re going to do at a larger scale of development. Maria Grygorovych: If it was possible, we’d talk about it all the time. It’s annoying that we have to wait to share things at the right moment. All game developers just want to talk about their games, but you’re not allowed. You have to wait. We’re really excited. If everything goes well, it’ll be possible to deliver some really interesting games. We have more experience now, which makes a lot of things much easier. I hope everything will be fine. GamesBeat: Is this something related to STALKER, or something that you think STALKER fans are going to like? Ievgen Grygorovych: Some of these projects will be totally new, for new players, not related to STALKER at all. That’s something we very much want to do. GamesBeat: The number of people working for the studio, has that changed much? Are you able to keep your teams going still? Ievgen Grygorovych: We planned and hoped that, on release, we wouldn’t have to lose part of the team. We were happy to see that we lost almost no one, even after we paid all the release bonuses to our employees. People still stayed with us. We had an unexpectedly low level of people moving to other companies. That’s great. It shows that people are happy to work here. They feel loyal to the company, and they feel that the company is loyal to them. That’s the only thing that can keep people around after such a long development. The project has been going for many years. Maria Grygorovych: It’s important to work on new content. These are creative people. They want to do creative work. When you start something new, even if it’s not a totally new project, like the DLC, it still involves a lot of brainstorming, which we love to do. That doesn’t happen as much when you’re in full production. It’s cool to do something new. It’s really inspiring. GamesBeat: A lot of studios have had difficult times recently. To be able to keep a large studio going is more challenging than ever. Maria Grygorovych: It’s not easy. It’s really a challenge. It’s hard all over the world, all around the industry. Our ideology–it’s not like we’re sure that everything will be great. We just believe, and do everything we can to make it possible. We built STALKER 2 like that. You can’t be sure of anything. You need to believe and rely on each other. That’s all you have. You’re never sure that everything will be perfect, but without believing, it’s impossible. You still need to do everything you can. Stalker 2’s setting is familiar for those in Ukraine. Source: GSC Game World GamesBeat: As far as how the studio is spread out around Ukraine and elsewhere, are you still in the same places you were during STALKER’s development? Ievgen Grygorovych: That hasn’t changed. We have an office in Kyiv and an office in Prague. We have a lot of people working remotely all over Ukraine. Some of our people work remotely in Europe. We’re growing in both Ukraine and the EU, as well as other places. But nothing has changed significantly since the release of STALKER 2. We have 505 people currently. GamesBeat: You’re still a large triple-A game studio, then. That hasn’t changed. Ievgen Grygorovych: That also includes the publishing side, though. We’re an indie that self-publishes. That requires a publishing department, and a lot of administration to manage such a big team. It’s a big organization, not just developers. Maria Grygorovych: We don’t feel like we’re big. That’s the reality. We understand it. But maybe because of how we’ve built all this over time–our understanding of what we’re doing hasn’t changed between 20 people and 500 people. It was much easier when we were just 200 people. It’s much harder to manage, a lot more work. We had more face to face connections with everyone. It’s not perfect. But this is how we can do a lot of projects. It’s important for any company to do several projects, because if you’re only focused on one thing, that’s much more risky. GamesBeat: How have other game studios fared in Ukraine? Have you noticed any changes? Ievgen Grygorovych: Most of the studios have closed in the last few years. Or a lot of them. Especially ones that had ******* projects and needed more funding. We have some smaller indie developers that are still releasing games, but they’re very small. The desire to release games is definitely there in Ukraine. But finding someone close to us–it’s not there. Maria Grygorovych: It’s hard, because investing in the industry right now–it’s much harder to find new investment for anyone, never mind if your team is in a country at war. Ievgen Grygorovych: I guess it would be fair to say–previously we had a lot of investment from American companies, European companies, publishers, and partners. Because of the risks of the war they stopped the financing. In a world where we didn’t have this risk and they continued to finance projects, I’m sure those projects would succeed, on average. Risk is sometimes overestimated. Definitely it’s harder. It requires more people and more time. But the cost of development in Ukraine is so many times smaller compared to U.S. companies or European companies. The level of professionalism, how much people love their work–investing in Ukrainian companies is still very reasonable compared to the rest of the world. The deadly monsters of Stalker 2 are having a meal. Source: GSC Game World Maria Grygorovych: We have a much better situation now, because we’re blessed with a good relationship with our owner, Maksym Krippa. He believes in us. When you need to find someone who will believe in you and your projects, your ideas–it’s risky, and that’s hard to find. Thanks to Maksym, we were able to release the game. Ievgen Grygorovych: Some developers in Ukraine that were previously working on developing games, we’ve started working with them as co-developers. They’re helping us develop our things. They may not have their own projects, or they’re still doing their own work, but also helping us. GamesBeat: People might be surprised at how game studios could get by with less funding. Maria Grygorovych: If you talk about game development in general, eastern European countries like Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic are doing great. You have fewer corporations and more independent studios doing games. It’s good that we can still do really creative work. It’s still expensive, but we put our ideas and creativity fully into what we do. It’s sad that a lot of studios have had to close, but I’m sure that these creative people can come out of this situation in the future. I hope so. GamesBeat: Do you feel like you need to hire more people at this point? Is there anything you’re doing that may require you to bring more people on board? Ievgen Grygorovych: We’re still hiring. We have some open positions. We didn’t want to hire a lot. Usually we only hire when we really need to bring someone into the company. In most cases we want to keep the company as small as possible, despite all our projects. Our strategy is to stay small. The more people you bring in, the more blurry the relationships inside the company become. It’s impossible to keep your attention on too many people. When departments start to get to around 60 people, it becomes less like human relations and more like corporate structure. We’re trying not to grow if possible. GamesBeat: How has game development changed for you? Do you see big differences between starting production now compared to starting production seven years ago? Ievgen Grygorovych: It’s a huge difference. Seven years ago we started without even knowing what engine we were going to use. We didn’t have any experience with Unreal Engine. We had a very small team. We didn’t know what to expect from the change in console generations, what the hardware would be. We didn’t have many of the things we have today. We’re starting now with a team and a process and a pipeline ready. It’s so much easier now, from a processes point of view. Maria Grygorovych: We already have great people who have a lot of experience. That’s the main thing. An iconic image from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone is depicted in Stalker 2. Ievgen Grygorovych: It’s very different when you have people who’ve released a huge game, and people who’ve released a game with this company. People who may have released a game at other companies, if you just put them all in one place, it won’t work how you imagine it right away. They haven’t built relationships with each other. They don’t have trust. It takes many years to build the relationships you need together as one big organism, one big family, to create something big. You need to spend many years together. It’s not bricks that create games. People create games, people who live together for many years. They need to love each other, or find a way to work with each other. That requires trust and respect. It takes time to build that trust and respect and loyalty, from the company to its people and from people to the company. In our case there is no such thing as the company. The company is me and Maria, and we’re just part of the team. We’re working with everyone and everyone is working with us. There’s actually no such thing as the company. It’s all about this group of people, a kind of family. GamesBeat: Did you get to take any breaks in the last year? Ievgen Grygorovych: Do you remember how many days you have? Maria Grygorovych: I have 140 unused vacation days through this year. Ievgen Grygorovych: I might have slightly more, 150 or 160. GamesBeat: Do you still dream about STALKER, then? Ievgen Grygorovych: For me, having a vacation for three months would be very painful. I can imagine resting for three weeks, but I wouldn’t be happy if I stopped working with our people more than that. Even three weeks–I want to dedicate more time to our family, to our kid. Maria Grygorovych: I’ll be happy with one month, if you’re interested. Ievgen Grygorovych: If you look at our work, 70% or 80% is the stuff that maybe we don’t love, but we have to do it. But the other 20%, we love it. It makes us happy. It makes us do what we do. That’s what commits us to the next five years of new projects. I can’t imagine my life without making games and working with these people. GamesBeat: Are there any parts of the new projects that are coming along easier because you have all this experience now? Ievgen Grygorovych: There are two things. It’s definitely easier for all the reasons we discussed. But also, we have higher ambitions. We want to make an evolution of something, or a revolution in something. Having those ambitions makes things harder. But it’s balanced now. Maria Grygorovych: I always have a lot of ambitions. That’s the biggest problem. We want to make the best game. For me it’s not easier in some ways. Maybe it’s harder. We have a lot of people, a lot of structure. It’s not an easy task to manage. It’s not fun. But at the same time, I’m so happy that the leads on our projects–they weren’t in such big roles before. We have one person who was a lead in an area, and now he’s creative director of a new project. He’s grown all these years into this position. It’s great to see how people are growing into great professionals. War Game: The Making of Stalker 2, is a new documentary from Microsoft. GamesBeat: You’re living in a very difficult environment, yet game development is very much part of your identity. Maria Grygorovych: For me personally, without developing games, I’d start to go crazy. It’s hard. It’s hard every day. Our family apartment building was hit with a missile. We didn’t have windows after that. These things happen all the time, some kind of big problem. I can’t start to talk about all the people related to us who’ve died in the war. Life now is so terrible. But when you develop games, it’s a world that you can go deep inside. Doing something creative, something inspirational–because of that, you’re not crazy. It helps you to be alive. Something I’d like to say for developers–a lot of people will tell you that what you want to do is impossible. It can never happen. Your ideas are bad ones or whatever. But if you really believe in it, everything is possible. Don’t listen to those people. Honestly, they know nothing. If you really want to make games, if this is what inspires you, everything is possible. Maybe not in the form you expect, or maybe not in the time you expect, but it’s still possible. You need to believe in that. In our case, everyone who told us we’d never release this, that we’d never reach millions of players, was wrong. The truth is, you need to believe and work hard. The post How the Stalker 2 team survived a tough game launch, the Ukraine war and a new update | exclusive interview appeared first on GamesBeat. View the full article

The free giveaways on Steam continue throughout the end of the year, as there's yet another game you can pick up for free. It might not be what anyone might expect, but free is free. View the full article

Epic Games has shared some of this year's most impressive Fortnite stats, and it seems that the Kim Kardashian cosmetic set made its way to the top of the yearly charts within seven days. Fortnite is a game that doesn't require its players to pay in order to fully enjoy it. Save the World is the only paid game mode in Fortnite; everything else that players will have to pay for is strictly cosmetic. Epic Games also makes it possible for players to collect V-Bucks without having to spend real money. As long as they play enough, they can unlock the Battle Pass's free rewards and earn up to 200 V-Bucks per season. It may not sound like a lot, but within a few seasons, that is enough to purchase a Battle Pass. View the full article

Oftentimes remasters can feel like a bit of a cash-grab, as though the developer found an old game lurking at the back of their desk drawers, blew off the dust, and slapped a fresh price tag on it. But Biomenace Remastered is of the sort that puts a big smile on my face. It's the tale of two ardent fans working to bring the classic 1993 shooter, originally from Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem studio Apogee, back to life. Impressing the game's creator, the pair secured the rights and have now completed their near two-year task to bring Biomenace back to the big time for a second run. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: 32 years later, forgotten shooter from Duke Nukem dev is getting a full remaster View the full article

В ходе общения с инвесторами соруководитель CD Projekt RED Михал Новаковский прокомментировал влияние искусственного интеллекта на игровую индустрию и внутренние процессы студии. Топ-менеджер заверил, что внедрение новых технологий не приведёт к сокращению рабочих мест в компании. View the full article

На сайте IGN появились списки лучших игр 2025 года. Редакция выбрала лауреатов в нескольких категориях. Так, Hades 2 стала лучшим экшеном, а ARC Raiders — шутером года. Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater признали лучшим переизданием, а Hollow Knight: Silksong — приключением. View the full article

Президент Blizzard Entertainment Джоанна Фэрис раскрыла в интервью журналисту Bloomberg Джейсону Шрайеру детали новой производственной стратегии студии. Под крылом Microsoft разработчики намерены отойти от экспериментов с новыми IP и сосредоточиться на регулярном выпуске контента по уже существующим франшизам. View the full article

Редакция Polygon назвала Blue Prince лучшей игрой 2025 года. Сотрудники выделили аж 50 фаворитов, настолько плодотворным оказался период для индустрии. Впрочем, журналисты отметили минусы в качестве массовых увольнений, из-за которых студии покинули разработчики, а некоторые команды распались целиком. View the full article

Хотя Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (наш обзор) принято сравнивать с популярными JRPG, французские разработчики на самом деле не стремились сделать "свою JRPG", рассказал геймдиректор проекта Гийом Брош. View the full article

2025 has been a great year for Xboxfans, with epic day-one Game Pass releases like GOTY winner Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Obsidian's Avowed. Without Xbox and Game Pass, it's debatable whether some of the biggest games of the year would've reached such a massive audience. View the full article

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has swept through every single award show it has appeared on, claiming the most The Game Awards wins of all time. It's a stellar game, one that revolutionized its genre, but also proved that games are a true art form. However, the Indie Game Awards disqualified it, not because of its strange funding and debatable “indie” status, but its use of AI. This was confirmed by the Indie Game Awards itself, who posted a statement on its FAQ page explaining why Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was excluded from the awards on the day of the ceremony, given that it was already nominated for the Debut Game and Game of the Year categories. It explained that IGA has a “hard stance” regarding the use of AI in video game development and that it had, prior to the ceremony, been told by Sandfall that no AI was used in the production of Expedition 33. E33 had some AI-generated placeholder assets that slipped through the cracks but were eventually removed. Image via Sandfall Interactive However, Sandfall Interactive did say it used “some AI” when making Expedition 33 a few months ago (via El Pais), which apparently came to the IGA's attention on the day the ceremony was supposed to take place. “In light of Sandfall Interactive confirming the use of gen AI art in production on the day of the Indie Game Awards 2025 premiere, this does disqualify Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 from its nomination,” the organization said. “While the assets in question were patched out, and it is a wonderful game, it does go against the regulations we have in place,” it added. The IGA has heavy-handed regulations when it comes to the use of generative artificial intelligence models, but are apparently willing to rework and reconsider its guidelines for future ceremonies, given how popular the technology is becoming (unfortunately). Even so, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been excluded from at least one major awards show, though not that it really matters. It won every category it was nominated for at the 2025 Golden Joysticks, took home nine Game Awards, and was even crowned Destructoid's own Game of the Year (even the community agreed). The post Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was disqualified from the Indie Game Awards—but not for the reasons you think appeared first on Destructoid. View the full article

Beyond a big dinner plate and presents in the vicinity of a sporadically lit fake tree, if there's one holiday tradition I can't let go of, it's settling down with one of the best MMORPGs when there's nothing else left to do. But which do I frequent? Well, usually the sort I associate with a holly, jolly Christmas of the past - bumbling around Elewyn Forest in World of Warcraft is usually how it goes, but Old School Runescape's Christmas jingle takes me back, too. Yet, after catching wind of Ethernia, a promising 2D MMORPG set to launch in the festive *******, I'm inclined to give it a go instead. Read the rest of the story... View the full article

It's safe to say Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been this year's biggest winner, sweeping awards shows across the board including a record number of victories at The Game Awards 2025. But the Indie Game Awards has just retracted the two prizes it had given Sandfall Interactive's surrealist RPG, following renewed discussions around the studio's use of generative AI tools during the development process. Both the Debut Game and overall Game of the Year awards have now been given to new recipients in its place. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Baldur's Gate 3's Neil Newbon isn't sure about a mocap Game Award, but he's got a great alternative Clair Obscur Expedition 33 just got a free update with "new adventures," a Steam Deck upgrade, and two much-wanted features From Borderlands 4 to Expedition 33, Fanatical's ****** Friday prices are cheaper than Steam View the full article

If stars align in the cosmos, Marvel Cosmic Invasion will hopefully be a glimmering and glittering portrait of what the future of Marvel games looks like. That doesn’t mean every subsequent Marvel game needs to have pixel-art sprite work or be a beat-’em-up with online co-op functionality. View the full article

A mirror to societyView the full article