If it is true that Beth has bought the franchise, we can all say goodbye to it anyway. Beth is a crappy publisher, and if they made the game themselves we're unlikely to see the good gameplay or the atmosphere that made S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series so good.

I guess thats all up to opinion, while the STALKER franchise has something special, a creepiness if you will, which is helped I guess because the Chernobyl disaster was a REAL event, STALKER 2 is nearly finished in its development, they wouldn't need to add much to get it out on the market as for future STALKER releases.... well I love FO3 and all the TES series, even if story-telling hasn't been their strong-point they certainly know how to create a big and believable world to explore Maybe THQ can pick it up like a gentleman above said even if Bethesda don't, they already publish the STALKER series anyhow, might as well continue its development?

Do we know exactly how close to completion the game was? There was barely any information released for the game at all.

My sources state it was 'nearly finished' and in polishing stage, how close that actually was no-one but GSC and their former team knows, but they had been working on STALKER 2 for at least 2 years, since the release of STALKER COP at the least, and since it was going Multi-Platform I would be asuming it was looking at a late 2012 release, early 2013 at the latest. On the Official stalker facebook page little bits of info were being released but you had to dig deeper for anything more substantial.

Given that each STALKER release was 2-3 years inbetween I don't think it wouldn't have been too far away, especially to have development suddenly stop

I guess the rights to the game still belong to Sergei Grigorovich. Or was that already known?

http://www.gamebandits.com/news/s-t-a-l-k-e-r-2-update-game-license-may-have-been-bought-by-bethesda-40088/

I would like a first person MMO, based arround surviving, be just like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. But with out an end, driven by NPC quests and the players themselves. The weapons and armor would need to be balanced enough to work in a multiplayer environment, you should need to find food and water to stay alive, and unrestricted PVP is a must.

I enjoy Fallen Earth from what I have played of it, can't wait to play it on a better computer. And Suravium sounds like it'll be really good. And I'm wondering it it'll be only in Russia/Soviet block countries or all over the world.

Yeah he is the one that was having a 'difference of opinion' with the rest of the STALKER development team at GSC over various things apparently not money related! I am guessing one of the things was the direction that the STALKER franchise was to take, since the development team walked and created VOSTOK games, and decided to make a MMO FPS (Suvarium) I am guessing one of the things Sergie and them couldn't agree on was STALKER becoming a MMO, if this is the case I am with Sergei! While I am up for some sort of Co-Op mode for the Single player MQ I think making STALKER a MMO is a mistake, it would be the equivalent of turning the TES series into a MMO! Hopefully Sergei has a nice chat to some Game Studios and agree's with one of them to continue on with the STALKER franchise and also finish of STALKER 2, so when you hear about STALKER 2 being dead, it's not, its just paused in its development while GSC finds a new team to take over! Btw this happens quite often in the game industry during production does anyone remember a game called Duke Nukem Forever?