Ever wonder what's the worst thing that can happen to your favourite games franchise when the studio that made it goes under? Most of DaC knows. And as of today, so do all Stalker fans.

These guys happen.

At least that's the word from Sergey Galyonkin, the same guy that broke the news that GSC was going under and that Stalker 2 was no more. Word is (yes because games news is serious business) the guys pictured above are now free to make a Stalker game with their own engine. Previous GSC boss Sergei Grigorovich and.. er.. "those other guys" [because if it isn't a censored word in DaC, it should] haven't made any sort of official comment yet, but I recommend having your Ukrainian-English dictionaries at the ready or at the very least Google-translating "arrow", "knee" and "mudcrab" into Ukrainian.

From Rockpapershotgun:

Ukrainian blogger and marketing man Sergey Galyonkin – who tipped off the closure of the STALKER 2 project earlier this year – has claimed that Bethesda now have the rights to make a publish a STALKER game. They apparently do not have rights to the extended universe. GSC owner Sergei Grigorovich has not sold the brand, but apparently Bethesda could now make a game based on the property with their own technology. We’ll report more on this as we get it.

This follows on from the closure of STALKER 2 earlier in the year, an event which culminated in Ukrainian spin-off studios such as Survarium devs, Vostok.

We’ve contacted Bethesda for a statement. UPDATE: Currently they are saying “No comment.”