West Games has launched a Kickstarter to help fund Areal and the results are looking pretty controversial. West Games is composed of a staff of members with plenty of experience in the gaming industry and have broken away from larger studios to produce a work of their own. Claimed to be the spiritual successor of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series, Areal has gained a lot of attention in the past couple of days, already raising $30K of the $50K funding goal. Wow-wee!
Areal is going to be a massive open world post-apocalyptic survival game with interchangeable shooting styles (FPS and TPS). Areal takes place in the future where the likes of civilization have dispersed due to the material known as Metamorphite, brought to earth by a meteor and spread some type of infection. In Areal, players can explore the world around them at any pace they wish and interact with any character, the story is non-linear. The environment is interactive and there are mutants just about everywhere you turn. Given the reception so far, Areal could turn out to be a highly anticipated PC, Mac, Linux, and console game.
However, there’s some controversy surrounding the Areal campaign that is both amplifying their funding but may also halt the campaigns progress altogether. West Games claims to be composed of the senior staff members from GSC Game World who are responsible for the creation of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro series. Immediately after the Kickstarter launch, Vostok, a group of former GSC Game World staff members and actual creators of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. reported that the claims of West Games are false. Additionally, in the Kickstarter campaign, West Games is utilizing footage and artwork from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series illegally and claiming it as their own.
Things are getting really complicated around Areal now. Some legal professionals are getting involved and it seems like the matter may not end well for anyone, and actually stop the campaign before it reaches its goal. At the moment, there’s information coming from both ends that makes it hard to pick a side but as things heat up a little more and more information is released about this conflict, we’ll surely cover it.
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[…] former employees at GSC Game World stated otherwise. At the time they claimed those at West Games never worked at GSC or developed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Later, they clarified that West Games was working on an ill-fated […]