Video Games

Ukraine wants to ban sale of Atomic Heart

Ministry of Digital Transformation appeals to platform owners

Marco Wutz

Ukraine wants to ban sale of Atomic Heart
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.

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Marco Wutz
MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg

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