GSC Game World is a Ukrainianvideo game developer based inKyiv with a second temporary office inPrague.[a] Founded inKyiv in 1995 by Sergiy Grygorovych, it is best known for theCossacks andS.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games. GSC Game World was the first company inUkraine tolocalize PC games to the Russian language. In 2002, it became a publishing house, GSC World Publishing.
The company was founded in 1995 by Sergiy Grygorovych (Ukrainian:Сергій Костянтинович Григорович,romanized: Serhiy Kostyantynovych Hryhorovych), who becamechief executive officer (CEO).[6][7] He came up with the company name and emblem in 1993, aged 15. "GSC" are the initials of his name in thetransliteration "Grygorovych Sergiy Constantinovich". Later Grygorovych explained this decision:[8]
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.[9] Early employees included Grygorovych's younger brother, Evgeniy, and Andrew Prokhorov.[9][10][11] The company was the first in Ukraine to translate video games intoRussian, additionally creating multimediaCD-ROM encyclopedias.[12][13][14]
In 1997 the company started developing its first video game, but difficulties in development led to its quick abandonment.[8]
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, theCIS market was unstable after the1998 crisis.
Sergiy Grygorovych
In 1998, after theeconomic crisis in Russia, GSC reoriented to the Western market, developingreal-time strategy games. GSC unsuccessfully tried to get a contract for the development ofWarcraft 3 fromBlizzard Entertainment.[8][15] 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.[16] It was powered by its own engine, which was subsequently reused byCossacks: 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 titledDoomCraft, which was shuttered six months later in favor of the development ofCossacks.[15][8]
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 gameOblivion Lost
In 2002, the company released the combathovercraft arcaderacing gameHover Ace: Combat Racing Zone[27][28] and another expansion toCossacks calledCossacks: Back to War.[29][30] At the end of that year, a new real-time strategy game namedAmerican Conquest was released.[31][32] Also, in March 2002, after the GSC Game World company trip to theChernobyl Exclusion Zone, theOblivion Lost concept was wholly revised and used theChernobyl disaster as a foundation. The game was calledStalker: Oblivion Lost, but soon the name changed toS.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.[15][24][25][26]
On 20 March 2007,S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was officially released.[45][46][47][48] 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 amongPC games according to the rating of British organizationELSPA.[49] On 12 February 2008, 950 thousand copies in theCIS and 700 thousand copies elsewhere in the world were sold, which madeS.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl the most successful project of GSC Game World to date.[50][15]
In 2009, GSC began work onS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.[9] The company officially announced the game on 13 August 2010.[citation needed] During development, the company shrank from 200[11] employees to 50.[9] It had previously been the largest video game developer inEastern Europe.[9] Financial services companyErnst & Young named Grygorovych Ukraine's "entrepreneur of the year" in February 2011.[9] On 9 December 2011, theUkrainian News Agency, published a message with a statement from GSC Game World CEO Sergiy Grygorovych that the company haddissolved. Development of theS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 game was discontinued.[61] Grygorovych stated that he did so for personal reasons.[14] Studio spokesperson Valentine Yeltyshev said that the studio's financial situation played a minor role in the dissolution.[62]
At the end of 2014, GSC Game World re-opened and announced that it was working on a new game.[63] The company founder's brother Evgeniy Grygorovych (Ukrainian:Євген Григорович,romanized: Evhen Hryhorovych) became its newCEO.[14][64] In May 2015, the company announcedCossacks 3, a remake of the firstCossacks game, including "all its original gameplay".[11][65] The game was released on 20 September 2016 onSteam, after which, the game was finalized and updated.[66][67]
When the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine began, GSC paused development onS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The company used social media to urge fans and game journalists to donate to theUkrainian Armed Forces and provided special accounts for donations.[73][74] By May 2022,S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2's development resumed after part of the team had been relocated toPrague, allowing them to continue working safely.[2] One former GSC Game World developer,Volodymyr Yezhov, waskilled in action nearBakhmut in December 2022.[75] On 27 December 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.[76]
Studios formed by teams and members from the GSC studio:[62]
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.[116][117]
West-Games was founded in 2012, originally under the name Union Studio, bychief executive officer Eugene Kim, who had formerly been GSC's team lead and software developer.[120] Kim had worked on GSC's canceledbrowser-basedS.T.A.L.K.E.R. Onlinemassively multiplayer online game, while five other employees had worked on priorS.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.[6] In 2013, Union Studio reorganized as West-Games, and in June 2014, the studio launched acrowdfunding campaign onKickstarter for a supposedspiritual successor toS.T.A.L.K.E.R. calledAreal.[121][122] The campaign was highly criticized because of the game's trailer, which almost exclusively used footage from previousS.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.[121][123] 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 theUnity game engine.[123] Several parties, including the "MISERY"mod developer, stated that the project was ascam.[121][123] Of the initially soughtUS $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.[124] West-Games initially claimed to have switched to private funding, though announced another crowdfunding campaign, this time onWefunder, in December 2014, seeking $600,000 to produce a game calledS.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Apocalypse.[10][125] When GSC reformed, the studio stated that West-Games was legally not allowed to develop aS.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, as GSC held all rights to the franchise.[10]
^abAs a result of the2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, GSC Game World temporarily relocated some of their staff to Prague and opened a second office.[2]
^"Минуле GSC Game World".SMNS Games (in Ukrainian). 4 December 2015. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^Запольскис, Александр (7 February 1998)."Французская живопись".Компьютерная газета (in Russian).Archived from the original on 4 September 2019. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^abcdefghijМурыгин, Вячеслав (24 April 2010)."Игры GSC: Хронология разработок".ExGSC.com (in Russian). Archived from the original on 19 August 2014. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^abМаслюков, Иван (23 January 1999)."WarCraft 2000: Nuclear Epidemic".Компьютерная газета (in Russian).Archived from the original on 22 April 2012. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^Чаплюк, Андрей (12 February 2008)."Сталкер и цифры".Igromania (in Russian). Igromedia.Archived from the original on 11 July 2021. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^"Рецензия на игру Hover Ace".Absolute Games (in Russian). Бу-Медиа. 7 October 2002.Archived from the original on 17 September 2014. Retrieved26 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. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^Кумби, Матвей (17 March 2004)."FireStarter".Igromania (in Russian). Igromedia.Archived from the original on 22 October 2020. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^Варнавский, Игорь (1 March 2005)."Александр".Igromania (in Russian). Igromedia.Archived from the original on 26 September 2021. Retrieved26 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. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^abМурыгин, Вячеслав (10 November 2012)."Памяти павших. Отменённые проекты GSC".ExGSC.com (in Russian). Archived from the original on 8 August 2016. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^"Warlocks".Old-Games.ru (in Russian).Archived from the original on 27 September 2021. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^"Ограбления".Old-Games.ru (in Russian).Archived from the original on 30 June 2021. Retrieved26 September 2021.
^Leks (21 July 2009)."Интервью с Олегом Яворским".Stalker-Portal.ru (in Russian).Archived from the original on 3 February 2017. Retrieved26 September 2021.
