The Witch-hunt. It Could Have Ended Up A Disaster – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Rip-Off Promoted With... Putin
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Several hours after the start of the campaign, the more inquisitive players noticed that most of the conceptual art in fact came from other sources, such as Ukrainian fantasy book covers, the official wiki page dedicated to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, or even materials available freely through the Unity technology. This, however, did not prevent the production from raising over USD 20,000 within the first day. The influx of money hasn’t slowed until the intervention of the representatives of Vostok Games, the studio which currently employs many former staff members of GSC Game World. On their forum, the creators of Survarium warned the users against West Games, claiming that none of their employees have worked in the company that was shut down in 2011. They also announced that they had lawyers looking into the matter. However, when inquired about it, Oleg Yavorsky, one of the members of the studio, stated that the lawyers stayed out of this eventually: "We do not have the rights to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise, so this would have to be addressed by GSC Game World".
One of the major complaints directed at West Games were accusations that the Ukrainians were not in fact the former staff members of GSC Game World studio. In this case, the truth lies somewhere in the middle: the majority of the team working on Areal are actually entitled to a resume position indicating the company behind the S.T.A.L.K.ER. series as their employer. However, Valentine Yeltyshev, CEO of GSC Game World, claims that this particular part of the team worked exclusively on the browser version of the title, and associating their names with hits such as Shadow of Chernobyl is a huge stretch.
Soon, a response from the creators of Areal followed; however it is difficult to say whether it managed to erase any doubts. A video was released online in which the members of West Games were introduced (it turned out that the announced multi-platform shooter requiring great effort is being developed by a team of only eleven people). Eugene Kim, the company's CEO, accused Vostok Games of undermining the reputation of its competitor. We fully understand that [our competitors] are flaming a witch hunt against us, and trying to discredit us at every chance that they get, whilst promoting their own post-apocalyptic video game", he wrote of the campaign’s website. However, Oleg Yavorsky assured that this was not the reason behind raising skepticism against Areal: "It's about the respect for the fans following the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise. In fact, our games differ from each other very much and are targeted at different audiences." West Games, in turn, gained the support of the official representatives of the now-defunct GSC Game World, while criticizing the attacks from other developers... Soon, however, the company withdrew their support. The media remained skeptical as well; these were especially websites such as Forbes (one of their editors, Erik Kain, conducted an extensive "investigation" for nearly a month with regard to the Ukrainian studio from the moment the first warning signs appeared) and VG247 that called for a policy of limited trust towards Areal. These actions were defined by West Games as "the opposite of what objective journalism stands for".
It's difficult to see the failure of Areal as a particularly bad thing, especially considering the fact that the developers apparently had no intention to make good on their promises from day one. Many players, however, regretted the fact that another chance for a solid follower of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was lost. However, this problem will soon be solved by GSC Game World itself. The studio was reactivated at the end of last year and got down to work on a yet unannounced title. All we know is that, unlike Survarium, it is not going to be a free-to-play project.
