As STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl drives past its two-month release anniversary, GSC Game World’s smash hit still has a few kinks to iron out.

In a recent interview, the CEO and game director Sergiy Grygorovych said candidly that although the game would have benefited from more time in the oven, the developers were running on fumes by then, so he decided to push the game out and fix it on the go instead.

STALKER 2 has received a couple of patches now, and the overall feeling in the community is that the game is moving in the right direction. The previous update did wonders for the game’s stability and got rid of some mildly infuriating (and occasionally game-breaking) bugs that prevented players from completing major story quests.

As with any colossal project released in a state between rocky and terrible, getting it to its full potential will take a while. After the most glaring problems were fixed, GSC Game World had some time to tackle technical issues.

Some fans feel the developer has taken that a little too literally, though: the changelog for the first patch of the year for STALKER 2 contains exactly five items.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl 1.1.4 Patch Notes

The first STALKER 2 update of 2025 has kept it nice and simple and tackles underlying issues that have been affecting the playability of the game since its release.

Players had been complaining of severe performance problems that appeared over time or around specific locations, and patch 1.1.4 addresses some of those.

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The lack of content fixes or updates is not surprising considering this is a technical patch, but the size is worth a double take: for PC players, updating STALKER 2 to version 1.1.4 entails a 126GB download, which is on the insane side for five items.

Here are the fixes included in the update:

• Shader Compilation: the game no longer hangs or crashes during the initial shader compilation, though it will still compile on every launch
• Rostok Memory Leak: the heart of the Zone’s trading and drinking has acceptable performance again, after fixing a serious memory leak triggered by the region
• Long-Term Performance: on the same tune, the game no longer lags when playing for long periods with aiming becoming noticeably smoother now
• Xbox Saves: a critical issue that occasionally caused Xbox players to lose their entire saves has been fixed
• Menu Stability: the game no longer crashes arbitrarily depending on certain UI animations

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Systems

Released

November 20, 2024

ESRB

M For Mature 17+ Due To Intense Violence, Blood, Use Of Drugs And Alcohol, Language, Crude Humor

Developer(s)

GSC Game World

Publisher(s)

GSC Game World