STALKER successor dev denies fraud claim as Areal creeps toward funding goal

West Games has denied claims of fraud regarding its game Areal, which it describes as ‘definitive spiritual successor to STALKER’.

Vostock Games, which emerged from the ashes of original stalker dev GSC, had accused West Games of fraudulent claims” regarding the legitimacy of its dev team and rights to liken Areal to STALKER.

The thread containing these accusations has been removed, however, and West says it hopes to move on with its efforts to crowdfund its title.

We have contacted Vostok Games about their supposed claim that we are fraudulent. They say that they have no relation to that claim and have since deleted the forum topic wherein a moderator accused us of being fake,” it said in a Kickstarter update.

The Kickstarter comments section has been completely hijacked by a couple of people, and even if we comment there, our posts will be ignored and buried. A former STALKER modder and current creator of a similar post apocalyptic Kickstarter project has been flooding our comments with negativity and misinformation, and then using various accounts to promote his game, called Project Seed. This is what we in the industry call guerilla PR. We are taking appropriate measures to combat this.

I hope that you, our supporters, can see through this deliberate negativity and help us make an awesome game with Areal. We hope that this negativity stops, and we want to be supportive as well as constructive towards our peers and colleagues.”

Areal has currently raised $30k of its $50k target with 28 days left of its Kickstarter campaign.