S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Enter the Chornobyl Anomalous Zone — a vast open world where anomalies, mutants, and rivals stand in your way. Explore, scavenge, and try to survive in this brutal and dangerous land. Evolving with every update, now overhauled and crowned with UPDATE 2.0.
First-Person ShooterHorrorOpen WorldRole-PlayingSurvival
Your like matters. Every heart nudges this game's GamingPickz Score and where it ranks (a small 5% of the score), so the lists get better for everyone.
- Released
- 2024
- Developer
- GSC Game World
- Platforms
- 2 systems
- Critics
- Not scored
- Steam Deck
- unsupported
- Download
- 160 GB
What is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl?
Enter the Chornobyl Anomalous Zone — a vast open world where anomalies, mutants, and rivals stand in your way. Explore, scavenge, and try to survive in this brutal and dangerous land. Evolving with every update, now overhauled and crowned with UPDATE 2.0.
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 20 November 2024 |
|---|---|
| Developer | GSC Game World |
| Publisher | GSC Game World |
| Platforms | PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S |
| Genres | First-Person Shooter, Horror, Open World, Role-Playing, Survival |
| Languages | 18 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata Q10865101, seeded 30 August 2026. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
None declared
Hearing
None declared
Input
- Partial Controller Support
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | partial support |
| Cloud saves | Yes |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | Steam Workshop |
| Online play | Single-player only |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | unsupported |
| Download size | 160 GB |
| Add-on content | 3 DLC listed |
| Age gate | None |
Content descriptors
- Frequent violence or gore
- General mature content
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl worth it?
80% of 138,669 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Mostly Positive. It costs $41.99 on Steam, on sale from $59.99.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. Players do report problems — see the reported-problems section below before buying. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl? How long to beat it
Total play time for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is about 131 hours to do everything, and around 36.1 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 36.1h | 88 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 71h | 306 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 131h | 27 |
At its current price of $41.99, beating the main story works out to about $1.16 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl system requirements
The minimum requirements from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl's Steam page. These are what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings.
| Memory | 16 GB RAM (other games at this level) |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i7-7700K / AMD Ryzen 5 1600X |
| Graphics | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB / Intel Arc A750 |
| Storage | 160 GB (more games this size) |
Can your PC run it? Check S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl against your exact GPU, CPU and RAM.
Where S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- Multi-platform
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Estimated sales for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
These are estimates, not reported figures. GSC Game World has not published unit sales for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 138,669 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $59.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If GSC Game World publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $41.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl updates & patch notes
Pulled from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
- Stalker 2 studio is raffling keychains made from a shot-down Russian helicopter to raise funds for mine removal in the real-world Chornobyl Exclusion Zone
- 'Can I cry?': Stalker 2 devs say its 2.0 update's engine overhaul was a nightmare—but worth the effort
- S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl — The Zone Kit Phase 2
- Patch 2.0.4 is available now!
- "We're not doing something that everyone [would] do": After Cost of Hope, Stalker 2 devs are working on multiplayer which won't be "session-based" like Counter Strike
- The Zone has its own sound 🎧
What readers say about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Problems players report
We read the 300 most recent negative Steam reviews of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl on 30 August 2026 and counted what they mention. These are complaints, not confirmed defects: we have not reproduced any of them, and a review describes one person's machine. What the counts tell you is which problems more than one person ran into.
- Crashes and freezes69 of 300 (23%)
Sadly, it's crashed 4 times in 3.5 hours.
Steam review, 21 August 2026 · 4 hours played · 213 readers marked it helpfulCrashes every 10 minutes or so even after full fresh reinstall and stripping it of all the cool stuff like FSR4 and Anti-lag, capping frames to 60, etc.
Steam review, 21 August 2026 · 132 hours played · 15 readers marked it helpful - Performance and stutter32 of 300 (11%)
It's one of the most unoptimized games of this generation.
Steam review, 23 August 2026 · 11 hours played · 10 readers marked it helpfulRandom FPS drops happen no matter where I am or what I'm doing.
Steam review, 24 August 2026 · 47 hours played · 6 readers marked it helpful - Will not launch or install10 of 300 (3%)
rip loved the game but i cant even launch it anymore every time i try it crashes 2.0 didnt fix nun of the bugs just made a whole bunch of new ones
Steam review, 25 August 2026 · 341 hours played · 8 readers marked it helpfulTraversing the zone is tedious, you can't run for more than 30 meters, you're permanently overencumbered and you rarely have any cool encounters or find valuable loot (as opposite to eg Fallout games where the exploring part is always really fun).
Steam review, 28 August 2026 · 63 hours played · 2 readers marked it helpful - Controller and input9 of 300 (3%)
Two years after release, any attempt at immersion is ruined by the enemy AI, input lag, etc.
Steam review, 21 August 2026 · 8 hours played · 16 readers marked it helpfulNo amount of effort ever got rid of all the input lag and bad frames.
Steam review, 29 August 2026 · 152 hours played · 4 readers marked it helpful
A further 16 reviews call the game buggy or broken without saying how, which is why they are counted separately rather than assigned to a theme. Counted by keyword across review text, so a review discussing two problems is counted under both. Read the reviews yourself.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl mods
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl supports Steam Workshop, and the 20 most-installed mods have 332,281 subscribers between them. The most installed is Shay's: Realistic Death Animations.
The most-installed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl mods
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Where S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl appears
The ranked lists and finder pages S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
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Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
24 games overlap with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4.
Part of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is one of 4 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games we track. See the whole series ranked by the GamingPickz Score, plotted on the grid, and listed in release order:
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl head to head
See S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
More S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl comparisons: vs S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, vs S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, vs STAR WARS Battlefront II (Classic, 2005), vs Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), vs Far Cry 3, vs Counter-Strike, vs Orcs Must Die!, vs Crysis 3 Remastered, vs Deus Ex, vs BioShock Remastered, vs Homefront, vs Killing Floor, vs Left 4 Dead 2, vs Outlast, vs Sanctum 2, vs Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, vs Town of Salem
Common questions about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
What platforms is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl on?
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S. It first released in 2024.
How much does S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl cost?
$41.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl?
80% of 138,669 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Mostly Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
Does S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl as unsupported on the Steam Deck, from its own testing.
How big is the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl download?
160 GB on PC, from the storage requirement on its Steam listing. Console versions differ.
Who made S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl?
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl was developed by GSC Game World and published by GSC Game World.
Is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl worth it in 2026?
80% of 138,669 Steam reviews are positive (Mostly Positive), and it is $41.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl on sale?
Yes, right now. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is $41.99 on Steam, down from its $59.99 list price (about 30% off), read on 30 August 2026. Prices move, so check the store.
What are the system requirements for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl?
At minimum, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl needs 16 GB RAM, a Intel Core i7-7700K / AMD Ryzen 5 1600X, a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB / Intel Arc A750, 160 GB of storage, from its Steam listing. That is what it takes to launch and be playable, not to run at high settings. Check it against your own PC on the can-I-run page.
How long does it take to beat S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl?
about 36.1 hours for the main story, 71 hours with the main extras, 131 hours to complete everything, from HowLongToBeat's player-submitted times. These are community medians, so your own run may be shorter or longer.