Last week we reported that STALKER developer GSC Game World had shut down and let go of its 50 strong workforce. Now according to a Tweet from the developer, “there is cause for hope”, as they put it. It went on, saying that there won’t be any official news until January 2012 regarding the state of the company. The Tweet said:

Dear Stalkers: We will not be releasing any official news until around mid January. However there is cause for hope! Good hunting!

It looks now that GSC GameWorld is at least somewhat-alive, although we don’t know how many employees the company employs or what state it’s in. We’ll have to wait until next month to find out.

GSC Game World, developers of the STALKER shooter series, have shut down, according to a report from RockPaperShotgun. GSC came to fame when they released the original STALKER, a very atmospheric first person shooter, in 2007, followed by a couple of expansions. At the time of shutting down, GSC employed some 50 developer working on STALKER 2, which was scheduled for release in 2012. Now it appears we’ll never see the sequel… Unless GSC manages to sell off the assets of the game during a bankruptcy sale.

GSC Game World is reported to be developing a second stand-alone S.T.A.L.K.E.R. expansion as well as a full-fledged sequel.

This comes from Clanbase and TTLG, both of whom cite the same Russian language interview with studio president Sergey Grigorovitch.

The expansion is subtitled “Call of Pripyat” and is due out later this year. While S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was mentioned, no details were given.

The post-apocalyptic first-person shooter/RPG was released back in 2007, with “Clear Sky”, the expansion prequel, out the next year.