If you're planning on pre-ordering the Ultimate Edition of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, you might want to do that in the next few days. The price of the highest-tier physical release with all the collectible items is going up thanks to the war in Ukraine.
As you are almost certainly aware, Russia invaded Ukraine last year and has been bombarding civilian infrastructure ever since. Stalker 2 developer GSC World, which was headquartered in Kyiv, relocated further westward away from the fighting with some developers moving as far as Prague. This naturally led to Stalker 2 being delayed into 2023 and pre-orders being refunded.
GSC remains adamant that Stalker 2 will arrive before the end of the year, and even released a new gameplay trailer just before January showing how far along they are. Unfortunately, the war continues with no end in sight.
With sudden moving expenses piled on top of development costs, as well as rising inflation and the cost of materials for all those neat collectibles, you can hardly blame GSC for rising the price of Ultimate Edition by $40 USD.
"To keep the quality of all the collectible items at the desired level during these uneasy times, unfortunately, we have to raise the price of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Ultimate Edition from $339 to $379 (or the equivalent in the local currency)," GSC wrote on Twitter. "The new price will take effect as of February 21st, 2023. This will only apply to the Ultimate Edition, we still managed to keep the prices of the other editions on the same level."
Stalker 2 Ultimate Edition comes with a lot of cool stuff, including a Steel Book, letters from devs, stickers, a zone map, a poster, faction patches, dog tags, a keychain with a fire starter, an art book, souvenir zone permit, Stalker figurine, Artefact Container lamp, and a backpack. If you don't want all that, there are also several cheaper physical editions and digital versions that come with exclusive Steam goodies, a special extra quest, and unlocked in-game cosmetics.