STALZONE

Steam post imageFriends,

This is ZIV, CEO of EXBO. I want to personally talk to you about a decision that hasn’t been easy for us either: STALCRAFT: X is changing its name and becoming STALZONE.

I understand that for many of you this news may come as a shock and, to put it mildly, cause frustration. The name STALCRAFT has been with us since the very beginning. For some, it has become something almost familiar and dear, for others, it is inseparable from memories of the game itself — the old versions, the first expeditions, trusted companions, and all the unforgettable highs and lows that, despite everything, are still remembered with warmth. For us, this name is much more than just a collection of letters. It represents a huge part of our lives: years of work, mistakes, victories, setbacks, sleepless nights, and a very long journey that began 13 years ago.

A brief history lesson

The name STALCRAFT actually existed before the game itself — even before the Minecraft mod. Back then, the name was pretty much all we had. In fact, it was the only thing I got in exchange for my hard-earned money after being sold on a map and mods that didn’t even exist yet. And, of course, there was no grand creative vision behind it. It was simply STALKER + Minecraft, which at the time perfectly reflected what the project was all about.

Sure, looking back, we could try to give it a more elegant interpretation and say that STALCRAFT means “the craft of a stalker”. To be honest, I’ve never met a single person who arrived at that meaning without first being prompted. Everyone understood it the same way: STALKER-themed Minecraft. And, to be fair, in those early days that wasn’t an insult — it was a pretty accurate description.

At the time, we had no idea how long this journey would last. And we certainly weren’t thinking about something as grown-up, and frankly as unexciting, as intellectual property. Over time, STALCRAFT gradually gained recognition within its niche and established itself as a standout Minecraft server. But we always kept moving forward, always expanding our boundaries. So when, shortly after founding the company in 2016, it became time to get our legal affairs in order, we filed an application to register the trademark — just as growing brands typically do.

And that’s when the first alarm bell rang.

Trademark registration issues

Our trademark application was rejected by Russia’s Federal Service for Intellectual Property because the name STALCRAFT differs by only one letter from the well-known game STARCRAFT. The fact that the games belong to different genres, look completely different, and are easily distinguished by players turned out not to be the key factor from a legal perspective. To regulators, we're all simply video games, and when one game's name differs from another by a single letter, the conclusion is fairly straightforward: it cannot claim exclusive rights to that name.

We decided not to give up and challenged the decision in court. In fact, we were involved in legal proceedings from 2022 all the way until April of this year. There were countless hearings, delays, document submissions, and even sociological surveys where forum users were asked whether they could tell the difference between STALCRAFT and STARCRAFT. (You can probably imagine the reactions.) At one point, we were even presenting screenshots from a Russian television report as evidence. As amusing as some of this may sound in hindsight, the outcome remained the same every single time: the courts consistently ruled against us.

Neither the rebranding to STALCRAFT: X nor attempts to add additional elements to the name changed the situation. We simply could not obtain meaningful legal protection for the brand.

At the same time, the game launched on Steam and began growing beyond the CIS region. Unsurprisingly, we encountered the same issues in other jurisdictions, including Europe and the United States, where trademark registration faced similar obstacles for the same reasons. And these weren't just hypothetical legal concerns for some distant future. We have already experienced real consequences. For example, on YouTube, our game category was removed for an entire year immediately following our Day X marketing campaign. That wasn't an abstract legal risk on paper — it was a very real example of us getting burned by the problem.

As things stand today, the STALCRAFT brand is not protected in the way any game brand or even any IT product brand should be protected. And the more the project grows across Western and Asian markets, the more this name shifts from being an asset to becoming a source of risk. This is where nostalgia, no matter how meaningful it may be, can no longer serve as the sole basis for a decision.

There is also a second reason behind this change — one that has nothing to do with legal matters and everything to do with what the game has become.

The name itself has become a problem

The name STALCRAFT no longer fully reflects what our game has become. We haven't been a Minecraft mod for a very long time, nor are we a niche Minecraft server anymore — even though that's where our journey began. Today, STALZONE is, quite honestly, a unique extraction shooter that plays like an MMO, and an MMO that gets under your skin like an extraction shooter.

But for new audiences, the name STALCRAFT often creates expectations that don't match reality — especially the CRAFT part. In our marketing campaigns, we regularly encounter people who, without looking too deeply into the game, assume it's either a casual sandbox, a survival game focused primarily on crafting, or something much more closely related to Minecraft than it actually is. And then, of course, there are the occasional people who get excited because they think a new StarCraft game is coming out. Just... spelled a little differently.

We deeply value the history behind STALCRAFT. The name means a great deal to us. It feels like home. But if we're honest with ourselves, and set nostalgia aside for a moment, the reality is that the name helps the project less and less as time goes on. Sometimes, it actively gets in the way.

This summer, we're launching major marketing campaigns outside our traditional markets. Investing significant time, effort, and resources into promoting a name that we may ultimately be forced to abandon anyway, whether by necessity or legal pressure, wouldn't be courage. It would be fear of making a difficult change. And we're definitely not afraid of that. We're not cowards. We didn't come this far just to play it safe.

Choosing a new name

Eventually, we came to the conclusion that it was time to make a serious decision: the name had to change.

What followed was a long process of finding a new one. We went through well over a hundred options. We explored different directions, different branding strategies, different ideas about what the name should communicate. We looked at how people responded to them, debated endlessly, argued, ran surveys, and did our best to avoid settling on something just because it was "good enough". We wanted a name that wouldn't cut the game off from its past, while still giving it a solid future.

In the end, we arrived at STALZONE.

To us, it's the closest thing to the original name while also being the most accurate. STALZONE preserves a recognizable connection to the past, but it does a much better job of reflecting what the game has become. Our game isn't primarily about crafting. It's about the Zone. About the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a place that has found a second life through the hundreds of thousands of players who return to it every day. A place that continues to change and evolve, with its own highs and lows, yet still manages to create unique stories for everyone who enters it.

We’d like to briefly touch on a point that some players may have questions about. We’re aware that the name STALZONE isn’t unique, and that it’s used by other projects as well.

That said, we’ve always tried and will keep trying to make sure our work respects the rights of others. Changing a name isn’t a simple task and comes with plenty of challenges, but we are putting in every effort to make sure that, in the end, everyone benefits from this situation.

I understand that not everyone will embrace STALZONE right away. Many people have grown deeply attached to the old name, and that's completely understandable. In fact, if there were a way for us to keep STALCRAFT without creating serious risks for the future of the game, we probably wouldn't have opened this Pandora's box in the first place. But that simply isn't an option available to us.

Changing the name doesn't mean STALCRAFT is being erased from our memories or removed from the history of the project. If anything, it means that one major chapter of our lives is coming to an end, and a new page is about to begin.

And in a way, there's something symbolic about that. Alongside the new name come new faces, a new lighting system that noticeably changes the look and feel of the world, and many of the things we're preparing for you this summer and throughout the rest of the year. The old name isn't the only thing we're leaving behind. We're also leaving behind the old organizational structure of our team.

Let’s continiue EXpanding BOundaries!

Since spring, EXBO has changed significantly on the inside. In the past, we often had to throw the entire company behind one massive initiative at a time, which meant that other areas inevitably had to wait their turn. Today, the team is structured differently. We're learning how to develop several key parts of the game in parallel. New player onboarding, core gameplay, season events, endgame content — these shouldn't move forward in bursts anymore, where one area advances only because everything else has been put on hold.

And yes, we're still working on multithreading too, don't worry.

Of course, a new name by itself doesn't fix the game's problems. It would be very convenient if all we had to do was rebrand, turn on the new lighting, and suddenly everything became perfect. Unfortunately, game development is a little less magical and a little more painful than that. For us, this rebrand isn't just a fresh coat of paint. It's part of a much larger transition into the next stage of development — not only for the project itself, but for the company as a whole.

At the end of the year, we'll be taking stock of everything we've accomplished. And our goal is very simple: we want even our most critical players to be able to honestly say that something has genuinely changed for the better — both in the team and in the game.

STALCRAFT has been with us for many years. STALZONE is not an attempt to forget that past. It's our way of giving the game the future it deserves.

To mark this moment, we've prepared a special promo code.

Enter STALZONE to receive a unique reward celebrating the beginning of this new chapter.

Once it's gone, it's gone.

If the promo code did not work correctly, please contact EXBO support: https://support.exbo.net.

And I'd also like to say thank you to everyone who has been alongside STALCRAFT throughout all these years. To those who logged in after school, after work, or after a difficult day. To those who invited friends, argued on the forums, complained in the comments, returned after long breaks, waited for updates, cursed our decisions, and still remained part of this massive, living story. In our game, the community has never been just an audience. It has always been a participant, a co-author, and a creator.

Now that story is beginning a new chapter, and we hope you'll support STALZONE with the same warmth and enthusiasm that you once showed STALCRAFT. There's still a lot of work ahead of us. A lot of changes. A lot of reasons to celebrate, argue, complain, return to the Zone, and once again feel that this is a world we all share.

The best is yet to come. Endgame for everyone, free of charge — and let no one leave disappointed.

Servers are open. See you in the Exclusion Zone!