Ukraine's Atomic Heart Attack [Feb 22, 2023, 7:47 pm ET] – Share – Viewing Comments
The Government of Ukraine plans to petition Valve, Microsoft, and Sony to remove
Atomic Heart from digital stores in Ukraine, and will ask platform
holders to consider “limiting distribution” of the game in other countries. At
heart of the matter are the new first-person shooter's Russian roots. There are
allegations that sales of the game directly benefit the Russian government and
that the game is possibly being used to harvest user data. Ukrainian tech
website
Dev.au first reported on this, and
PCGamesN has a statement in English directly from the Ukraine
government:
“Regarding the situation with the release of the game Atomic Heart, which has Russian roots and romanticises communist ideology and the Soviet Union, The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine will send an official letter to Sony, Microsoft, and Valve requesting a ban on selling digital versions of this game in Ukraine,” says Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, Alex Bornyakov.
“We also urge limiting the distribution of this game in other countries due to its toxicity, potential data collection of users, and the potential use of money raised from game purchases to conduct a war against Ukraine.”
“According to media reports, the game’s development was funded by Russian enterprises,” the statement continues. “Therefore, we call for all users worldwide to avoid this game. We also want to emphasise that the game developers have not publicly condemned the Putin regime and the bloody war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine.”
Lukiopimp wrote on Feb 23, 2023, 08:55:
Dude the game was in development since around 2019 - there is no connection to the war on Ukraine, except that it's a Russian dev studio, but not all Russians are pro war or pro current government. Yeah they had to move the studio to Cyprus because of the sanctions, I'd do that to if all my work on a game was threatened. As much as I disagree with Russia's attack on Ukraine, I do not feel the need to automatically vilify all people or works from that country.
Not for nothing but Russia has been planning on this since before 2019... They took over Crimea in 2014 and weren't going to just stop there. In fact, they already laid out the plans to take over the other neighboring countries following Ukraine.
So does that not mean, if another game is in production right this very minute, and Russian invades, oh, I don't know, Belarus, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia in the next 2-3 years, was the intent of the developers to help with the funding in years to come? Hard to tell, because again, we don't want to relate gaming and something people created for the good of the world, to something so horrific. Though this is Russia we're talking about, probably one of the most corrupt and deceptive countries on the planet. Everything has a purpose and with that government involved, nothing should be ruled out.
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