If you were following gaming news earlier this week, a pretty explosive claim surfaced: Sergiy Grygorovych, founder of Ukrainian studio GSC Game World, said in a YouTube interview that Microsoft paid more than the entire development cost of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl just to keep it off PlayStation as a timed Xbox exclusive. "It paid for itself before the first day," Grygorovych said, via machine translation from the Ukrainian-language interview. Now GSC has stepped in to say that picture is not accurate.
What Grygorovych actually claimed
The interview, posted to YouTube channel OLDboi, had Grygorovych laying out a version of events where Microsoft moved fast and spent big. His telling: the tech giant had money to burn, wanted to score points against Sony, and was impressed enough by Stalker 2's reveal trailer performance online to push a deal through in roughly a week. "They brought in all the documents for signing in about a week," he said.
The implication was clear. Microsoft paid a sum that exceeded the game's total development budget just to lock it to Xbox and Game Pass for a timed window, which ultimately ran from the game's late 2024 launch through to November 2025.
GSC's formal pushback
GSC Game World initially chose silence, but issued a statement saying continued silence "may be perceived as confirmation of information that is simply not true."
Here's the thing: the studio's response doesn't directly counter the specific dollar figure claim. What it does do is question Grygorovych's authority to speak on the matter at all. GSC says that under existing agreements, Grygorovych "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 studio also clarified that the majority of the development budget came from studio owner Max Krippa, not from the Microsoft exclusivity deal. The framing positions Grygorovych's comments as assumptions or secondhand impressions rather than firsthand knowledge.
"We have always fully honored these agreements on our side," GSC said. "For this reason, his comments regarding the company's activities cannot be considered an accurate reflection of the actual state of affairs."
The messier context behind all of this
Stalker 2 had one of the more turbulent development histories in recent memory. Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine forced the team to relocate, delayed the game multiple times, and put enormous pressure on a studio trying to ship one of the most ambitious open-world games ever attempted by a Ukrainian developer. The game launched in a rough technical state and GSC spent the following months releasing major patches covering performance, AI behavior, animations, and more.
That context matters here. The idea that Microsoft swooped in with a check that covered the entire development cost, while the studio was operating under wartime conditions, makes for a compelling story. But compelling and accurate aren't always the same thing, and GSC is clearly uncomfortable with that version becoming the canonical one.
Grygorovych's relationship with the studio he founded is also not straightforward. The statement's emphasis on his exclusion from both negotiations and development suggests there may be internal history shaping how both sides are telling this story.
Where things stand now
The timed Xbox exclusivity for Stalker 2 ended in November 2025, and the game has since launched on PS5. The exclusivity deal itself is done. What remains is a public dispute over how that deal came together and how much it was worth, with the studio founder on one side and the studio itself on the other.
GSC closed its statement with a line that reads almost like a mission statement: "We believe the story of this game should be based on facts, not on assumptions or subjective opinions." That's a pointed message aimed squarely at its own founder.
For players who want to stay across the game's ongoing updates and content drops, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl guide collection has everything you need as GSC continues post-launch support.
