Ukraine wants to ban sale of Atomic Heart
Atomic Heart, which was released today for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S, may not be able to be sold for much longer in Ukraine.
The country’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation Oleksandr Borniakov stated that the ministry would send an official letter to Sony, Microsoft, and Valve asking them to take down digital sales of the game in Ukraine (via dev.ua).
Borniakov commented: "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.”
“Therefore, we urge all users to ignore this game. We would also like to emphasize to the Western audience that the game developers have not issued a public statement condemning the Putin regime and the bloody war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine,” the Deputy Minister concluded.
It is true that Atomic Heart’s developer Mundfish, which officially has its headquarters in Cyprus, has decided not to comment on the ongoing war, giving a vague and rather cowardly statement of being “non-political” and “pro-peace” after facing allegations of harvesting data for the Russian security services. According to dev.ua, Mundfish also has ties to Russian energy giant Gazprom.
The game’s composer, Mick Gordon, has since announced that he’d donate all his earnings from the game to the Red Cross Ukraine Crisis Appeal.
Atomic Heart heavily features the Soviet Union, the KGB, and Russian military themes, which is obviously not going down well in Ukraine due to the ongoing illegal invasion of the country by the Russians, who have verifiably committed hundreds of war crimes in the process.
