Despite assurances of continued development just last month, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has been officially canceled. The silver lining to this cloud is that the team is pouring many ideas from the now-canned project into Survarium, a free-to-play MMO that the team calls "more ambitious."

Developer GSC Game World made the announcement through a series of tweets on its Twitter account. It has also already set up an official site and Facebook account for Survarium. The first tweet read, "despite no official continuation of Stalker 2. it looks like the ideas and spirit will live on in the team's new game - 'Survarium'."

Since then, other tweets have revealed a new studio (Vostok Games), which contains the entire team from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, to work on Survarium. The studio calls it "more than just an MMO," with the option of player versus the game world as in S2. The company promises a developer diary for Survarium later tonight, and a Q&A tomorrow to shed more light on the project.

So why is the project being dropped? "All those asking about funding etc. That is not the issue," a tweet reads. "We were unable to secure the IP rights to continue with the Stalker franchise."

More details are forthcoming, but in the meantime the newly formed Vostok Games has released a short video explaining the changes. At least, as much as possible in such a cheeky way.