STALKER 2 Has Received No New Delay – Team Clarifies The Situation  

After canceling some pre-orders

STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl is a game that has gone through a thousand waves, having been delayed several times since it was first announced in 2018. The most recent delay came in June of this year, when the Ukrainian team announced that the project will be moved to 2023 due to the war in the country.

Now, the studio is coming to assure the community that another postponement is not in the works, as heard by many in the last few days. Specifically, the whole thing started when various owners of Xbox consoles who had placed a pre-order received a message that their order was canceled because the game had been moved to an unknown release time frame in the future. At the same time, the Xbox Store completely shut down new pre-orders for everyone.

In the end, it seems that there is no cause for concern and STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl is still slated for 2023. More specifically, a representative of the team came to clarify the landscape through a statement to PC Gamer , emphasizing:

We were forced to push the game back to 2023, with no firm release date set for now. We made the announcement at Microsoft’s Extended E3 presentation, releasing a new Dev Diary and introductory cutscene at the same time.

Microsoft is refunding pre-orders for games without an exact release date. When we announce a specific release date later, pre-orders will be reactivated for Xbox as well. Pre-orders on PC (Steam, EGS, GOG) are not affected by this.

And officially, nothing changes for STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl, which is expected to debut in 2023 for Xbox Series X|S and PC, even arriving on Xbox Game Pass from day one.