Authorities in Ukraine have announced plans to ban the recently releasedAtomic Heartgame both locally and internationally. In pursuit of this, the country’s Ministry of Digital Development will formally requestMicrosoft,Valve, andSonyto cease sales.
Atomic Heart, for those unfamiliar, has a premise involving an alternate retrofuturistic USSR. A few hours after the game’s release, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital affairs, Alexander Bornyakov, said he would send an official letter to Sony, Microsoft, and Valve asking them to take down digital sales of the game in Ukraine and possibly other countries.
“We also call for limiting the distribution of this game in other countries due to its toxicity, potential collection of user data, and the possibility of transferring it to third parties in Russia, as well as the potential use of money raised from game purchases to wage war against Ukraine,” read the statement toDev.UA(translation viaGaGadget).
Related:Atomic Heart: Testing Ground 1 Walkthrough
Also, in his statement, the deputy minister citedMundfish Games' lack of staunch condemnation of the Russian invasion as proof of pro-Russian alignment and a reason for Western audiences to “ignore the game.” Mundfish, while currently based in Cyprus, was previously headquartered in Moscow and has a privacy policy that allows it totransfer data to Russian authorities(via AIN Capital).
In our officialhands-on previewwith Atomic Heart, we found the game to have non-political intentions despite heavily featuring the Soviet Union, the KGB, and Russian military themes, which is obviously not going down well in Ukraine.
The Ukranian authorities believe that the latest game is a Russia-funded project that uses pseudo headquarters in Cyprus as a cover-up, citing the privacy policy as an indication of this.
Mundfish likely saw this coming and shared pro-peace statements that seemed to downplay the Russian link allegations. A week before the game’s release, Atomic Heart music composer Mick Gordon announced that he’ddonate all his earningsfrom the game to the Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal.
It remains to be seen whether Sony, Microsoft, and Valve will adhere to the request.
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