STALKER 2 has passed a major sales milestone

Summary

  • STALKER 2 has already turned a profit as of December 18th, just weeks after its release.
  • GSC last reported that the game sold 1 million copies in its first 48 hours on the market, but that turnover may now double.
  • The budget of the game could be around 80 million dollars.



STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl turned a profit, a senior GSC Game World official confirmed. This major sales milestone was achieved just a few weeks later STALKER 2edition.

The latest entry in GSC's immersive sim series launched on November 20th. Two days later STALKER 2 has already sold a million copies, with the Ukrainian developer confirming this in a social media post.

Related

The release of STALKER 2 was so huge in Ukraine that it caused internet blackouts

Reports suggest that the launch of STALKER 2 was so massive in Ukraine that it overwhelmed local internet providers and caused blackouts.

Two days before the game's first month anniversary, STALKER 2 is already in the green numbers, GSC owner Maxim Krippa told Forbes Ukraine. While he did not provide updated sales figures for the game, he did confirm that the project itself had a budget in the “tens of millions of dollars”. Publicly available LinkedIn data indicates that GSC has approximately 400 employees by the end of 2024. Let's naively assume that this number of employees has been consistent since 2018 when STALKER 2 restarting development – ​​and using Glassdoor's estimate that the average salary of a Ukrainian game developer is $36,000 gross per year, it's likely that the game's budget was roughly $80 million.



STALKER 2 may have already sold around 2 million copies

Factoring in a 30% markdown, GSC makes roughly $42 from each copy STALKER 2 Standard Edition, priced at $59.99. Assuming an $80 million budget, the company would need to sell around 1.9 million copies to break even. However, even if this budget estimate is accurate, the studio likely had a slightly lower target break-even point, as some sales would no doubt include the higher-end Deluxe and Ultimate Editions priced at $79.99 and $109.99 respectively. The same goes for the fact that the game is also available on the Epic Games Store, which has a lower 12% cut in sales, but probably accounted for less of his sales.


The future of STALKER looks bright

However, with Krippa now confirming that the project is already in the green, it's likely STALKER 2 As of December 18, it had sold two million copies. Its strong commercial momentum is great news for fans of the series, as it increases the likelihood that another game will be greenlit in the future.

GSC turning a profit in less than a month is all the more impressive in light of reality STALKER 2 launched on Xbox Series X/S and PC only. A potential PlayStation port would be almost guaranteed to boost its overall sales. And while a PS5 version of the game hasn't been officially confirmed, a court filing that emerged in the Epic vs. Apple case in mid-2021 revealed that Microsoft only secured a three-month exclusivity period for STALKER 2. It is unclear if anything has changed since then and if GSC is already actively working on a PS5 version of the game.

Source: Glassdoor, Screen Rant

Leave a Comment