S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 developers released a calendar for 2024 with a hint of the game's release date

Developers from GSC Game World decided to please fans of the gloomy S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe with a nice New Year’s gift. The team’s official social media pages have posted a calendar for 2024, designed in the style of the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. It contains not only spectacular images from the game but also a hint of the post-apocalyptic shooter’s release date.

The possible release date of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 in the published calendars is indicated by the unusual colour of one of the months of the next year. For some reason, the developers have marked February 2024 in red, while all the others are highlighted in the usual black colour. This is probably the release window for the game, or an important event for the game will take place this month. If this is not the release date of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, then in February, players can expect a new presentation of the game with the release announcement. We wrote about this in our news article, which you can find here

Rumours about the shooter’s imminent release have been circulating for a long time. The latest leaks reported that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is scheduled for release in February next year. Taking into account the ongoing development of the game, the date may have shifted, but the month itself may still be an important period of activity for the authors themselves. GSC Game World itself has already tried to refute any fan theories about this month in the calendar, but it doesn’t look like a mere coincidence.

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Updated images of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 with new HUD appeared in the Epic Games Store

Some detail-oriented gamers have noticed that the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl page on the Epic Games Store has been slightly changed to show a new version of the old screenshots with a revamped user interface and slightly brighter colours.

You can find these “new” images below, and you can find the old versions nearby, although the changes to the HUD don’t represent much of an improvement in themselves. But the timing is intriguing – it’s very close to the Xbox Developer Direct presentation scheduled for 10pm PST on Thursday 18 January.

The idea is that, as with Perfect Dark, these two things are connected, and therefore important news about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, such as a new trailer and a release date for GSC Game World’s shooter, may appear during the event, given that the game will be available at launch via Game Pass and as a temporary Xbox Series X|S exclusive. At the end of November last year, GSC Game World CEO Evgeny Bazarov confirmed the release date of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, which should finally get into the hands of gamers in the first quarter of this year.

In this sense, it’s certainly time to announce the exact release date, and Xbox Developer Direct is certainly the perfect showcase for an announcement of this magnitude. So far, we know for sure that Avowed, Ara: History Untold, Hellblade 2, and Machine Games’ Indiana Jones game.