Earlier this week, GSC Game World studio founder Sergiy Grygorovych made a bombshell revelation about the development of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Grygorovych said in an interview with YouTuber OLDboi that Microsoft paid a significant sum to keep the then-upcoming open-world shooter a timed Xbox exclusive.
According to Grygorovych, Microsoft paid the Ukrainian studio more than it cost to develop the game in order to release it on Xbox, and not PlayStation. "It paid for itself before the first day," Grygorovych said, via machine translation.
GSC has now itself responded to those claims, saying they don't paint an accurate picture. In a statement to Insider Gaming, the developer explained that it initially decided to ignore the claims, but felt it must now set the record straight "as continued silence may be perceived as confirmation of information that is simply not true."
"In accordance with the agreements reached between the parties, Sergiy was not involved either in negotiations with partners regarding Stalker 2 or in the actual development of the game throughout its full production cycle," the developer said.
"We have always fully honored these agreements on our side. For this reason, his comments regarding the company's activities cannot be considered an accurate reflection of the actual state of affairs."
Although the statement doesn't specifically counter the claim itself, it does say "the majority of the development budget" was funded by studio owner Max Krippa.
"The development of Stalker 2 became one of the most challenging projects in the history of the video game industry," the statement went on. "We believe the story of this game should be based on facts, not on assumptions or subjective opinions."
Image credit: GSC Game World
In the original interview, Grygorovych said there was a combination of factors that pushed Microsoft to pay for Stalker 2's timed-exclusivity. The tech giant had the cash to spare and, in an effort to score points against Sony, went after Stalker 2. The game's reveal trailer performed really well online, too, according to Grygorovych, which convinced it to make the deal.
"They brought in all the documents for signing in about a week," he said.
Stalker 2 has had a tumultuous development journey, in part due to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The game had to be delayed multiple times, and launched in a rough technical state. It wasn't especially well-received when it initially arrived in late 2024, but GSC has been diligently working on it since, releasing multiple major patches that touched everything from performance to AI routines, animations and more. The game's Xbox timed-exclusivity ended one year later, in November 2025.