S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has finally launched globally after long development and several delays. The sequel to a cult first-person shooter has been off to a good start on Steam despite its simultaneous release on Xbox and Game Pass.
Launched on November 20, Stalker 2 received mixed to positive reviews from critics, with its average Metascore ranging from 74 (PC) to 81 (Xbox). Most articles praised the game’s unique atmosphere, while also pointing at many technical issues and bugs.
Stalker 2 currently has a “Very Positive” rating on Steam, with 81% of the 9.2k reviews being positive. According to Steam Scout, 45% of them are written in English, followed by Ukrainian (18.4%) and Russian (15%).
Most fans seem to be happy with the long-waited release, praising GSC Game World for creating an immersive experience that stays true to the original game in many aspects. However, there are a lot of complaints about poor optimization, bugs, and the lack of the promised A-Life 2.0 simulation system.
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl has already peaked at 113,587 concurrent players (via SteamDB). These are solid results, especially given that it is also available on Game Pass. The CCU count may also increase over the weekend, when more people play the game.
The 113.5k peak ranks Stalker 20 as the 19th biggest Steam release of 2024 by peak concurrent players, right between Liar’s Bar (113.7k CCU) and EA Sports FC 25 (110k CCU).
The top 10* can be seen below:
*Note: The list doesn’t include several games from the SteamDB charts: Banana, which peaked at over 917k concurrent users, because a) it is more of an app for speculations rather than a game (people keep it launched for hours to get tradable cards) and b) it is unclear how many of those were bots; and games that reached their peak prior to 2024 (mostly Early Access graduates like Sons of the Forest and V Rising).
- Black Myth: Wukong — 2.4 million CCU
- Palworld — 2.1 million CCU
- Helldivers 2 — 458.7k CCU
- Throne and Liberty (free-to-play) — 336.3k CCU
- The First Descendant (free-to-play) — 264.8k CCU
- Last Epoch — 264.7k CCU
- Once Human (free-to-play) — 231.6k CCU
- Dragon’s Dogma 2 — 228.5 CCU
- Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 — 225.6k CCU
- Content Warning — 204.4k CCU (reached its peak while being free-to-keep in the first 24 hours of launch)
GSC Game World has already pledged to improve Stalker 2 by releasing hot fixes and patches in the first days of launch. The studio will also release a roadmap in December to share more details about the game’s content support.
“We have big plans for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe,” the team said in a statement. In a way, today is both a return and the beginning of a grand new journey.”