Despite Mixed Reviews, Stalker 2 Breaks Series Records on Steam

After what seems like an eternity—likely because it has been well over a decade—Stalker 2 has finally hit the shelves. GSC Game World, the team behind the game, persevered through a global pandemic and the challenging decision to relocate from their homeland of Ukraine due to the ongoing conflict with Russia.

The mere existence of a mostly polished game feels like a small miracle, a sentiment echoes by many players who are diving into it on Steam.

Since its release yesterday, Stalker 2 has rapidly climbed the ranks to become one of the most played games on Steam. According to SteamDB, the game reached an impressive peak of 113,587 concurrent players, making it one of the platform’s biggest hits of 2024. Those numbers are poised to rise even more over the coming weekend.

These statistics are leaps ahead of any figures posted by the earlier Stalker games. Given the age of the originals, it would have been disappointing if Heart of Chornobyl didn’t surpass them by a significant margin.

Connor Makar reviewed the game and gave it four stars, praising it as “an excellent work of struggle and loneliness, even if it is plagued by bugs.” A similar sentiment is mirrored across multiple reviews, though some critiques were harsher. As a result, the game settled at an average score of 77 on OpenCritic.

On Steam, while users acknowledged several critical and technical hiccups, the overall feedback was very positive. In fact, more than 81% of user reviews leaned towards the positive side. It seems the community is enjoying their time with the game while anticipating the inevitable mods that’ll add new features and address glaring issues from the initial release.

Whether you’re ready to dive into the Zone immediately or prefer to wait for a few patches and mods to smooth out the experience, our Stalker 2 guides can be your trusty sidekick. If you’re gearing up, you might want to learn how to boost your carry capacity early on, understand what artifacts are and where to find them, and master the art of handling anomalies. Knowing how to repair and upgrade your constantly jamming weapons will also come in handy.