What just happened? It is not the first time that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has affected the gaming industry. On this occasion, the Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, the creator of the Stalker series, was affected. The company suffered a data breach at the hands of Russian hackers, who now threaten to leak material online if their demands are not met.
GSC Game World posted a statement on Twitter yesterday saying that an employee “account for a team app for working with images has been hacked”. He blames a community of Russian social network threatening to use the data for extortion and intimidation.
The company adds that it has been subjected to continuous cyber attacks for more than a year now, that is, after the Russian invasion. She says the team, like most Ukrainians, has seen many things far worse than hacking and extortion since the war began.
A message from the GSC Game World team pic.twitter.com/rqRM0tFZmO
– stalker official (@stalker_thegame) March 12, 2023
GameRant reports The breach was committed by a group of Russian hackers called “Vestnik TSS”. A recent post on Russian social networking site VK includes images and artwork from the game, along with a series of demands that, if unmet, will see “tens of gigabytes” of unpublished material published online.
The demands ask GSC Game World to change its attitude towards players from Russia and Belarus, and to “apologize for the inappropriate attitude towards regular players from these countries”. Also, you want to resettle RU to the game and unblock the “NF Star” profile from the game studio’s Discord channel. The company has until March 15th to meet these demands.
The VK account that posted the requests has a name that translates to “Herald of ‘The Same STALKER’.” The group has nearly 15,000 followers, and ironically, community guidelines prohibit illegal content and talk about politics and political ramifications.
GSC Game World asks fans of the game to avoid viewing, searching for, or sharing any Stalker 2 material that hackers may release because “outdated and still-in-progress material may dilute the impression of the final idea we have put into the game.”
Stoker 2: The Heart of Chernobyl is one of Most anticipated PC games of 2023as we have seen so far it appears very promising. He was twice late, the second time as a result of the conflict in Ukraine. The game is now scheduled to release sometime in December.
