STALKER 2 has been patched roughly every 2 business days since launch

With Tuesday’s announcement of a 1.0.3 patch, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has now received its third substantive post-launch code update. When you take into account the so-called “day zero” patch that went out to reviewers in the hours just before the game officially launched on Nov. 20, that means the game has been updated on average every two-and-a-quarter business days. It’s an impressive pace, especially considering the extenuating circumstances of the high-profile game’s release.

STALKER 2 went live on Nov. 20 with a cavalcade of reviews – including here at Polygon – that called out the game’s rough state at launch. My own experience over some 40 hours included everything from major audio issues and bizarre hitches during cinematic cutscenes, to abhorrent AI behavior, to minor animation and graphical hitches. As I continued playing the game (I’m 65 hours in at this point) more bugs continued to crop up. 

On Sunday night, for instance, I spent a good 6,000 coupons deescalating a situation with a vendor only to see him drop dead as he passed through an invisible wall. That bug, and a handful of others, feature prominently in today’s patch notes. It seems almost as if publishers GSC Game World are pacing the community, working issues from earlier in the game first before moving on to the later problems.

That makes sense to me, because STALKER 2 is best played slow. It’s a game about exploration, and the intimate challenges that crop up as you move overland from point-to-point in an extremely hostile environment. If you’re trying to race to the end of the game, you’re frankly doing it all wrong.

But more than anything, it just goes to show the incredible dedication and commitment of the developers — which still persists 1,013 days since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where the studio is based. Consumers are meanwhile voting with their dollars. Even with its inclusion in the Xbox Game Pass program, which means the game is free for subscribers, STALKER 2 has reportedly sold more than one million copies in the 48 hours after launch.

Not bad for a game being built in a warzone.