Sergiy Grygorovych, head of GSC GameWorld, surprised everyone when he announced that a new STALKER game, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, is currently under development. And while the team targets a 2021 release, it has not secured any publisher yet.

In the 222 episode of the “How to make games” podcast, Epic Games’ director of publishing, Sergey Galyonkin, revealed that STALKER 2 is now in its design document phase and that the game was announced early so that GSC GameWorld could find a publisher at E3 2018. As Galyonkin noted, GSC GameWorld will use the media’s attention and hype surrounding the announcement of STALKER 2 in order strike a publishing deal.

Galyonkin also revealed that the team that is currently working on STALKER 2 is a separate that was not involved in the development of Cossacks 3, and some of its members have worked on the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game.

Out guess is that GSC GameWorld will go radio silence for the next couple of years, however, we kind of hope to hear at least something about STALKER 2 at this year’s E3 event.