GSC Game World is a Ukrainian video game developer based in Kyiv with a second temporary office in Prague.[a] Founded in Kyiv in 1995 by Sergiy Grygorovych, it is best known for the Cossacks and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games. GSC Game World was the first company in Ukraine to localize PC games to the Russian language. In 2002, it became a publishing house, GSC World Publishing.
History
Founding and early activity
The company was founded in 1995 by Sergiy Grygorovych (Ukrainian: Сергій Костянтинович Григорович, romanized: Serhiy Kostyantynovych Hryhorovych), who became chief executive officer (CEO).[2][3] He came up with the company name and emblem in 1993, aged 15. "GSC" are the initials of his name in the transliteration "Grygorovych Sergiy Constantinovich". Later Grygorovych explained this decision:[4]
My father used to say that you have to devote your life to making a name for yourself so that later there would be something to be proud of. And so I used my initials to name the company.
— Sergiy Grygorovych
By 1996, the company employed fifteen people in a two-room apartment.[5] Early employees included Grygorovych's younger brother, Evgeniy, and Andrew Prokhorov.[5][6][7] The company was the first in Ukraine to translate video games into Russian, additionally creating multimedia CD-ROM encyclopedias.[8][9][10]
Game development
In 1997 the company started developing its first video game, but difficulties in development led to its quick abandonment.[4]
I remembered the principle: if you want to do something but don't know what exactly, look at the others and don't do the same. Our market didn't demand intellect in those times, so we decided to target the western audience. Moreover, the CIS market was unstable after the 1998 crisis.
Sergiy Grygorovych
In 1998, after the economic crisis in Russia, GSC reoriented to the Western market, developing real-time strategy games. GSC unsuccessfully tried to get a contract for the development of Warcraft 3 from Blizzard Entertainment.[4][11] According to the CEO, they were rejected due to Blizzard's distrust of Grygorovych's youth. By the end of 1998, the company finished its debut commercial game, WarCraft 2000: Nuclear Epidemic.[12] It was powered by its own engine, which was subsequently reused by Cossacks: European Wars. Nuclear Epidemic distinguished itself from other strategy games of the time with its increased unit size limits. At the beginning of 1999, it was released for free online. They began development on another project titled DoomCraft, which was shuttered six months later in favor of the development of Cossacks.[11][4]
At the beginning, we developed a game with a plot about the war of robots and aliens in the entourage of nature and the Aztec pyramids. But at every meeting, we said to ourselves: "We are doing complete nonsense."
— Sergiy Grygorovych, about the canceled game Oblivion Lost
In 2002, the company released the combat hovercraft arcade racing gameHover Ace: Combat Racing Zone[23][24] and another expansion to Cossacks called Cossacks: Back to War.[25][26] At the end of that year, a new real-time strategy game named American Conquest was released.[27][28] Also, in March 2002, after the GSC Game World company trip to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the Oblivion Lost concept was wholly revised and used the Chernobyl disaster as a foundation. The game was called Stalker: Oblivion Lost, but soon the name changed to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Oblivion Lost, due to copyright complications with the word "Stalker". The rendering system was reworked. The game was scheduled to be released at the end of 2003.[11][20][21][22]
On 20 March 2007, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was officially released.[41][42][43][44] On 24 March 2007, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. held the eighth position in the sales charts for various platforms, and the first position among PC games according to the rating of British organization ELSPA.[45] On 12 February 2008, 950 thousand copies in the CIS and 700 thousand copies elsewhere in the world were sold, which made S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl the most successful project of GSC Game World to date.[46][11]
In 2009, GSC began work on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.[5] The company officially announced the game on 13 August 2010.[citation needed] During development, the company shrank from 200[7] employees to 50.[5] It had previously been the largest video game developer in Eastern Europe.[5] Financial services company Ernst & Young named Grygorovych Ukraine's "entrepreneur of the year" in February 2011.[5] On 9 December 2011, the Ukrainian News Agency, published a message with a statement from GSC Game World CEO Sergiy Grygorovych that the company had dissolved. Development of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 game was discontinued.[57] Grygorovych stated that he did so for personal reasons.[10] Studio spokesperson Valentine Yeltyshev said that the studio's financial situation played a minor role in the dissolution.[58]
Revival
At the end of 2014, GSC Game World re-opened and announced that it was working on a new game.[59] The company founder's brother Evgeniy Grygorovych (Ukrainian: Євген Григорович, romanized: Evhen Hryhorovych) became its new CEO.[10][60] In May 2015, the company announced Cossacks 3, a remake of the first Cossacks game, including "all its original gameplay".[7][61] The game was released on 20 September 2016 on Steam, after which, the game was finalized and updated.[62][63]
When the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine began, GSC paused development on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The company used social media to urge fans and game journalists to donate to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and provided special accounts for donations.[68][69] By May 2022, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2's development resumed after part of the team had been relocated to Prague, allowing them to continue working safely.[1] One former GSC Game World developer, Volodymyr Yezhov, was killed in action near Bakhmut in December 2022.[70] On December 27, 2022, a farewell ceremony for Yezhov was held in the Volodymyr Cathedral with the participation of a military guard, which was attended by many people.[71]
Studios formed by teams and members from the GSC studio:[58]
Deep Shadows was founded 30 August 2001 in Kyiv by Sergiy Zabaryansky and Roman Lut. Deep Shadows games use the Vital Engine, developed by the company's founders while at GSC.[109][110]
Vostok Games was founded in 2012, after the temporary dissolution of GSC. The organization is developing and supporting the original post-apocalyptic online gameSurvarium.[5] It also developed Fear the Wolves, a battle royale game released in 2019.
West-Games was founded in 2012, originally under the name Union Studio, by chief executive officer Eugene Kim, who had formerly been GSC's team lead and software developer.[113] Kim had worked on GSC's canceled browser-based S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Onlinemassively multiplayer online game, while five other employees had worked on prior S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.[2] In 2013, Union Studio reorganized as West-Games, and in June 2014, the studio launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter for a supposed spiritual successor to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. called Areal.[114][115] The campaign was highly criticized because of the game's trailer, which almost exclusively used footage from previous S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.[114][116] When asked to provide images from the game, representatives of West-Games presented screenshots of a landscape that was a slightly modified version of a pre-designed asset available for purchase on the "Asset Store" for the Unity game engine.[116] Several parties, including the "MISERY" mod developer, stated that the project was a scam.[114][116] Of the initially sought US $50,000, Areal raised almost $65,000, however, in July 2014, two days before its campaign closed, the project was suspended from Kickstarter, with Kickstarter citing guideline violations.[117] West-Games initially claimed to have switched to private funding, though announced another crowdfunding campaign, this time on Wefunder, in December 2014, seeking $600,000 to produce a game called S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Apocalypse.[6][118] When GSC reformed, the studio stated that West-Games was legally not allowed to develop a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, as GSC held all rights to the franchise.[6]
^ abAs a result of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, GSC Game World temporarily relocated some of their staff to Prague and made it their headquarters.[1]
^"Минуле GSC Game World". SMNS Games (in Ukrainian). 4 December 2015. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^Запольскис, Александр (7 February 1998). "Французская живопись". Компьютерная газета (in Russian). Archived from the original on 4 September 2019. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^ abМаслюков, Иван (23 January 1999). "WarCraft 2000: Nuclear Epidemic". Компьютерная газета (in Russian). Archived from the original on 22 April 2012. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^Чаплюк, Андрей (12 February 2008). "Сталкер и цифры". Igromania (in Russian). Igromedia. Archived from the original on 11 July 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^Romaine, Garret (5 September 2001). "Cossacks: European Wars". ESC Magazine. Archived from the original on 4 November 2002. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^"Рецензия на игру Hover Ace". Absolute Games (in Russian). Бу-Медиа. 7 October 2002. Archived from the original on 17 September 2014. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^ abcdeГалёнкин, Сергей; Данилов, Олег; Птица, Александр; Светличный, Сергей (March 2002). "Игры на экспорт"(PDF). Домашний ПК (in Russian) (39). ITC Publishing: 74–77. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^Кумби, Матвей (17 March 2004). "FireStarter". Igromania (in Russian). Igromedia. Archived from the original on 22 October 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^Варнавский, Игорь (1 March 2005). "Александр". Igromania (in Russian). Igromedia. Archived from the original on 26 September 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^Кузьменко, Александр (30 April 2007). "S.T.A.L.K.E.R."Igromania (in Russian). Igromedia. Archived from the original on 13 June 2021. Retrieved 26 September 2021.
^Leks (21 July 2009). "Интервью с Олегом Яворским". Stalker-Portal.ru (in Russian). Archived from the original on 3 February 2017. Retrieved 26 September 2021.