After many a delay and much anticipation, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has finally been released with a staggeringly large download size. However, you might be surprised to see that part of the game’s title has changed in the time between its first announcement and its release. Although there wasn’t a notification or official reveal that part of the name was changed, it didn’t take long for some players to spot that the game’s title in Steam was updated. But for a large portion of players, it seemed like that name change went unnoticed until notifications went out to inform players that the game had been released.
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GSC Game World, the company behind S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, went through a rough development period for the game, including a fire that damaged offices. These setbacks led to multiple delays, which were understandable given the situations GSC faced during this period of time. Then, there was one setback in particular that led to GSC making a slight change to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2’s name: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
When and Why “Chernobyl” was Changed to “Chornobyl”
GSC first revealed the game as “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl,” and this spelling was used by the official team as recently as 2022, where the developers’ X (formerly Twitter) account posted an update in January 2022 stating that the game would be delayed until December 2022. While it was eventually delayed again, the post acts as a decent reference for when the name change happened.
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According to PC Gamer, the actual day that the name changed on Steam was March 14, 2022. Given that the post about delaying the game to December 2022 was in January, and that the Enter the Zone trailer released in June 2022 has the updated spelling, the timeline fits together quite nicely. So, it seems that the decision was made by GSC between January and March 2022 when the team then updated the title on Steam.
Of course, that leads you to the question of why GSC decided to change “Chernobyl” to “Chornobyl,” and the answer is a blend of history and politics. The condensed version of this is that some parts of the language became political due to the contentious relationship between Ukraine and Russia. As a Ukrainian company based in Kyiv, GSC made the decision to switch the game’s title from the Russian “Chernobyl” to the Ukrainian spelling of “Chornobyl.”
This is a reflection of a larger effort from Ukraine to get English-based media to use Ukrainian spellings for Ukrainian locations instead of the Russian spellings, a movement that gained momentum after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which is explained in greater detail by The Independent. So, while this seems like a small change that you might’ve missed prior to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2′s release, it’s actually part of a larger movement.
