By Jim Rossignol on June 4th, 2012 at 11:00 am.
It seems that Survarium devs Vostock weren’t the only studio to rise from the ashes of STALKER developer GSC. There’s also Union Studio, whose LinkedIn page states that they are “developing cross-platform action shooter which will be available for PC, Mac, PlayStation, XBOX.” It also reveals that the CEO is Eugene Kim, one of the Stalker coders, while the design lead is Peter Dushynsky, who apparently worked at Metro devs 4A, as well as taking the lead for “Stalker Online” at GSC.
04/06/2012 at 11:08 skalpadda says:
Maybe from the madness something beautiful will grow..
04/06/2012 at 11:48 Galcius says:
With just a handful of men…
04/06/2012 at 12:38 Andy_Panthro says:
We’ll start all over again!
04/06/2012 at 14:57 westyfield says:
All over aGAIIIINNNN!
04/06/2012 at 15:44 Hodge says:
I’m not trying to tell you what to be.
04/06/2012 at 16:19 skalpadda says:
Oh no, oh no, not me
04/06/2012 at 11:09 Gap Gen says:
An interesting way to support small businesses over large (non-state) monopolies; have a corruption level so high that companies have to disperse and reform into smaller chunks in order to avoid being crushed by it.
04/06/2012 at 11:17 Duckee says:
Go on? Elaborate.
04/06/2012 at 11:56 Gap Gen says:
Well, the implication from the RPS story about GSC being shelved was because it got big enough that it was being crippled by being milked for bribes. Unsure whether this is true, but what I read hinted heavily at it.
04/06/2012 at 13:54 12kill4 says:
That might be the case if it weren’t for that fact that organised crime is so prevalent in places like Moscow that most every commercial venture has to employ a ‘roof’ organisation (see: protection racket) to shield it from harassment (other than that of your own ‘roof’ when you fail to pay, or they decide you should be paying more); and that only the particularly large and/or successful ventures would have sufficient capital to employ legitimate and professional security operators (usually ex-military / police, so even then you have to worry, given the state of those institutions).
***This is according to the research I was doing into this last year for uni; and admittedly some of the primary sources were from the early 2000s so potentially things could have improved…
04/06/2012 at 14:22 Kollega says:
For the record, if you believe the latest reports about corruption, employment in “roofing” has moved from organized crime to police and various special services that abuse their power like no tomorrow. That’s in Russia, though: i’m not sure how it is in Ukraine.
04/06/2012 at 15:05 lijenstina says:
The reasons were unknown – no official confirmation about them from Grigorovich. We can only speculate about them – one version is that he got second thoughts about the project that could fail to be economically viable especially when the consoles versions were out of the equation, an another one is that he simply got bored of making games.
05/06/2012 at 12:12 Don Reba says:
That was completely groundless speculation, and several people said on and off the record, that there is no evidence to support it.
04/06/2012 at 11:28 Bremze says:
Seems to work the other way around in the USA.
04/06/2012 at 13:26 fish99 says:
haha
04/06/2012 at 11:19 Maldomel says:
So, more stalking inbound? Good.
04/06/2012 at 11:25 Nemon says:
Get out of here, stalker.
04/06/2012 at 13:18 LostViking says:
No kidding. I had to re-install Stalker: SOC to get over the disappointment that they canceled Stalker 2. As long as they use a similar setting I don’t really care if it’s a new Stalker or not, maybe they can come up with something else exciting…
05/06/2012 at 03:00 P7uen says:
An action shooter and an MMO.
Where Now For The STALKER Atmosphere?
04/06/2012 at 11:30 EugenySG says:
Why only the second? This is the fourth studio already )
05/06/2012 at 12:10 Don Reba says:
To elaborate, the 4 studios founded by former GSC employees are:
* 4A Games, with Metro 2033
* Flying Cafe, with Cradle
* Vostok Games, with Survarium
* Union Studio, with unnamed shooter
Although, that said, there are former GSC employees in practically all Ukrainian game development studios, and there are quite a few.
04/06/2012 at 11:45 megazver says:
Stalker Online was sheeeeeeeet.
We’ll see.
04/06/2012 at 12:26 magnus says:
Hopefully some good will come of this, the only positive comments on Suvarium I’mhearing are from the developers and PC Gamer of whom lets face it are stupidly obsessed with the concept of MMO/Multiplayer games over everything else.
04/06/2012 at 17:09 IckyThump says:
I feel like I could complain endlessly about Survarium, but honestly, as long as I get to explore some more STALKER-style environments I’ll be getting it.
04/06/2012 at 20:22 Shooop says:
I’m willing to guess whatever they make can’t end up any worse than Survarium will inevitably end up being.
04/06/2012 at 20:35 niuds says:
http://dv.gd/oej
06/06/2012 at 11:55 Uninteresting Curse File Implement says:
I *love* action shooters!