GSC Game World breached, hackers threaten to leak STALKER 2 material

Ukrainian studio GSC Game World disclosed in March 2023 that attackers had broken into an employee's account on a collaborative image application and stolen unreleased material from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, the game it had continued developing through Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

A group calling itself Vestnik TSS claimed the intrusion in a post on the Russian social network VK, publishing samples as proof. The studio said the stolen material included the game's full storyline, cut scene descriptions, concept art and global maps. The group threatened to release tens of gigabytes of further data if its demands were not met by March 15, 2023.

The demands were political rather than financial. Vestnik TSS asked GSC Game World to change its stance toward players in Russia and Belarus and apologise to them, to restore Russian localisation for the game, and to unban a user called NF Star from the studio's official Discord server.

GSC Game World refused to comply. It told players that the leaked files were outdated work in progress that did not represent the finished game, asked the community not to share them, and said it had been under near-constant cyberattack for more than a year.