Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine continues to cast a shadow over the world. In the video game industry, several developers have had to delay their games after the war forced them to evacuate. One of them is GSC Game World, the developer of the upcoming Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl.

The ongoing war in the region has already forced GSC to postpone Stalker 2 to 2023 after initially promising to release the game later this year. However, some believed that Stalker 2 would not be coming out in 2023 at all after Microsoft was spotted refunding pre-orders.

The Polish site, XGP, reports that Microsoft has told customers that the game is postponed to an "unconfirmed date in the future." In the meantime, the Xbox Store has stopped taking pre-orders for Stalker 2.

With GSC Game World in the middle of relocating to Prague, fans are concerned that the post-apocalyptic survival horror game won't hit store shelves until 2024 or later.

Thankfully, GSC has released a statement to clear the confusion.

Here's what a GSC spokesperson wrote to PCGamer:

We had to postpone the game to 2023 with no exact release date for now. We made the announcement at E3 Microsoft Extended Show, alongside the Dev Diary and intro cutscene. Microsoft refunds preorders for the games with no exact release date. When we announce the exact release date later on, the preorders will go live again for Xbox. Pre-orders on PC (Steam, EGS, GOG) are not affected by this.

If it's any consolation, other digital games distribution platforms are still taking pre-orders. According to Steam, Stalker 2 will come out on December 2023. The Epic Store is outdated with its claims, as it still lists that the game will come out in December this year.