Earlier this week, those who pre-ordered Stalker 2 began receiving messages informing them that their orders had been cancelled due to the fact that Stalker 2’s release date has been pushed back to an “unconfirmed date in the future”. At the same time, the pre-order option on the Xbox store was disabled. Following Putin’s illegal and barbaric invasion of Ukraine, the studio’s home, GSC Game World initially put Stalker 2’s development on hold, picking it up again once the studio was later relocated to Prague. Though originally slated to release in April this year, it was pushed to the first half of 2023 and the fact there’s no solid date is reportedly why Xbox is offering refunds. “We had to postpone the game to 2023 with no exact release date for now,” a GSC spokesperson told PC Gamer. “We made the announcement at E3 Microsoft Extended show, alongside the Dev Diary and intro cutscene. “Microsoft refunds pre-orders for the games with no exact release date. When we announce the exact release date later on, the pre-orders will go live again for Xbox. Pre-orders on PC (Steam, EGS, GOG) are not affected by this.”
