Stalker 2 Studio Denies Xbox Paid More Than Dev Cost

"It paid for itself before the first day." That was Sergiy Grygorovych, founder of GSC Game World, talking about the Xbox exclusivity deal for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl in a recent interview with Ukrainian YouTuber OLDboi. According to Grygorovych, Microsoft paid the studio more than the game's entire development budget to keep it off PlayStation for a year. It was a bombshell claim, the sort of insider detail that rarely surfaces publicly.

Now the studio he founded is calling him a liar. Or at least, calling his version of events wrong.

GSC Game World issued a statement to Insider Gaming pushing back hard on Grygorovych's account. The studio said it had stayed quiet about his public comments for a long time, but felt compelled to respond:

"GSC Game World refrained from commenting for a long time on Sergiy Grygorovych's public statements about the company. However, we now consider it necessary to respond, as continued silence may be perceived as confirmation of information that is simply not true. In particular, his recent claims, including his statements regarding the relationship between Stalker 2 and the Xbox teams, do not reflect the actual facts."

The studio went further, stating that Grygorovych was not involved in partner negotiations or the game's development during its full production cycle, per agreements reached when he left GSC in 2023. "For this reason, his comments regarding the company's activities cannot be considered an accurate reflection of the actual state of affairs," the statement reads.

A founder versus his own studio

This is an unusual situation. Grygorovych isn't some disgruntled mid-level employee leaking on Reddit. He founded GSC Game World. He was there when the original Stalker shipped. His claims carried weight precisely because of who he is. But the studio's rebuttal leans on a specific technicality: that he wasn't in the room when these deals were made, so he can't speak to their terms.

I covered the original claim just yesterday in my piece about how Stalker 2 turned a profit before it sold a single copy. At the time, the numbers Grygorovych described sounded extraordinary. A platform holder paying more than a game's entire dev budget for timed exclusivity is a staggering figure, even by Microsoft's standards during the height of the Xbox Series X|S console war push. GSC's response doesn't actually give us a counter-number or confirm what Microsoft did pay. It just says the founder's version is wrong and that the "majority of the development budget" came from the studio's current owner, Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Krippa.

There's a gap between "this isn't true" and "here's what actually happened," and GSC's statement sits right in the middle of it. The studio is asking us to take its word over its founder's, while providing roughly the same amount of hard evidence: none.

In the original interview, Grygorovych painted a picture of Microsoft moving fast after being impressed by Stalker 2's reveal trailer, which racked up millions of views on YouTube. "They brought in all the documents for signing in about a week," he said. He framed the deal as a combination of Microsoft having deep pockets and wanting to score against Sony during a period of aggressive platform competition.

What we actually know

Stalker 2 launched in late 2024 as a timed Xbox console exclusive. It had a rough start, arriving in a poor technical state after multiple delays caused in part by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. GSC has spent the time since release patching the game extensively, improving performance, AI behaviour, and animations. The Xbox timed-exclusivity window ended in November 2025, one year after launch, when the game arrived on PS5.

GSC's statement closes by saying the studio is focused on a significant update and the game's first major story DLC. It also includes a line that reads like a pointed jab at its former founder: "We believe the story of this game should be based on facts, not on assumptions or subjective opinions."

I find this whole dispute fascinating because both sides have credibility problems. Grygorovych may not have been in the room for the Xbox negotiations, but he founded the company and presumably had access to institutional knowledge before his departure. GSC, meanwhile, has every business incentive to downplay the size of a platform exclusivity payment, both for its relationship with Microsoft and for future negotiations with other partners. Neither party has shown receipts. Until one of them does, this is a he-said, they-said standoff between a studio and the man who built it.