STALKER 2 sells over a million copies, first big patch to arrive this week

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl launched last week, and so far, the response from critics and fans alike has been mixed - with most of the criticism surrounding the game's bugs, glitches, performance issues, and inconsistent design and presentation. However, setting aside the rough edges and STALKER 2's mix of shooting, survival, exploration, and horror captures what made the original a classic.

Developer GSC Game World has announced that sales have already exceeded 1 million copies after a few days, which doesn't include all gamers playing on Xbox Game Pass on PC and console. It has also been confirmed that the game's first patch is arriving this week.

And it will be the first of many, with players hoping that support will arrive at a steady clip. "We want to reassure you once more that we will make every effort to constantly improve your S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl experience," GSC Game World writes. "We are truly grateful for your feedback and suggestions for improvement."

With the game still relatively fresh, this first patch focuses on crash and quest progression fixes, which is excellent. It's unlikely that this update will fix all of these issues in the game, but we fully expect STALKER 2 to get a steady stream of updates and improvements well into the new year. GSC Game World notes that it is working to improve the game's A-Life system - which simulates NPC, monster, and animal interactions in the game even when they're not present or on screen.

Here are the Patch Notes for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl's first post-launch update.

Crash Fixes, including:

• Issues and memory allocation failures, which previously caused the game to exit unexpectedly, particularly around rendering, skeletal meshes, and quest-related cutscenes.

Main Quest Progression Fixes, including:

• Several bugs blocking the main quest progression, NPCs getting stuck in objects, incorrect quest markers, and issues with quest cutscenes.
• Revision of the main quests (like Visions of Truth or A Minor Incident) to ensure smooth transitions, avoiding rare cases of players not being able to proceed further.

Gameplay & Balance Adjustments, including:

• Fixing the price of the weapons with upgrades installed compared to their value without attachments.
• NPCs behavior, including the way they act when lacking a shelter during the Emissions.

Cutscenes & Visual Fixes, including:

• Rarely missing facial animations, misplaced NPCs, and visual inconsistencies like detached heads and clothes clipping.
• Quality and stability improvements of the visual effects.

Softlock Fixes, including:

• Issue where players were unable to close the trade screen after putting ammo in a wrong slot while playing on a gamepad.

User Interface Improvements, including:

• Quest notifications now showed correctly during dialogues.
• Corrected texts and missing interaction prompts.

Noted to be addressed in future updates:

• Analogue sticks dead zones bugfixes.
• A-Life system bugfixes.