The war between Moscow and Kiev is also being fought on the video game front. It came out on November 20th Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyla Ukrainian production from the GSC Game World studio and a highly anticipated sequel to the first chapter of the saga. Immediately, the title ended up at the center of the digital conflict between the two countries.
In fact, a video has started circulating on social media, lasting one minute and bearing a fake watermark of Wiredin which the game is accused of collect personal data of users on behalf of the Kiev government, in order to “locate citizens suitable for mobilization”. Among the sensitive information that would be sent to the Ukrainian authorities would be the players’ locations, device names and IP addresses. In all likelihood, this footage was artfully created by Moscow and is part of its broad campaign misinformation online.
The Kremlin’s fight against this game, however, was not limited to this. As reported by various sector newspapers, in fact, it seems that a group of Russians have started sending messages on Telegram, to offer money in exchange for reviews negative on Steam or TikTok regarding Stalker 2. All posts reportedly emphasize the need to point the finger at bugs and technical problems of the game, even offering pre-packaged templates of unfavorable ratings. The amount offered for this “job” is equal to 100 rublesapproximately 0.84 cents.
Moscow’s campaign against the production of GSC Game World appears not to have been very successful. The game currently has almost 60 thousand reviewsfor an overall opinion “Very positive”. But why did the Kremlin rage against it Stalker 2?
In addition to being an entirely Ukrainian production, the title has become a sort of symbol of resilience of Kiev. After the outbreak of war, it was postponed several times, part of the development team was forced to move to Prague, and others were mobilized and sent to fight. The subtitle, “Heart of Chornobyl,” was also changed to the native handwriting Ukrainian instead of the Russian “Chernobyl”. Furthermore, during the war years, the website was blocked by the Federation authorities after GSC Game World had called for an end to the conflict and development material had been stolen from hackers of Moscow, who had threatened the studio with blackmail.
The developers, however, were not intimidated.
“We are a Ukrainian company and, like most Ukrainians, we have experienced much more terrifying: destroyed homes, ruined lives and deaths of our loved ones,” they declared. “Attempts to blackmail or intimidate us are completely useless”