The Ukrainian government has asked companies not to sell Atomic Heart digitally anywhere in the world, even though it’s on Game Pass.
Chances are if you’ve heard of the name Atomic Heart, it’s only because of the political controversy it’s become mired in. Although developer Mundfish is officially based in Cyprus, it’s faced accusations of secretly being a Russian entity.
Atomic Heart’s depiction of an alternative history Soviet Union has also led to accusations of being Russia propaganda, with the studio even having to deny that it was collecting player data and giving it to the Russian government.
While there’s been far too much smoke to tell if there is a fire beneath, Ukraine certainly believes the allegations to be true, as it is calling for Atomic Heart to be banned from sale. Not just in Ukraine but everywhere else too.
Oleksandr Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation, has said that he will be sending a letter to Sony, Microsoft, and Valve requesting that digital versions of Atomic Heart not be sold in Ukraine and for its distribution in other countries to be limited.
Aside from the allegations of harvesting player data, Bornyakov claims that Atomic Heart’s development was Russian funded, and that any money made from its sales could be used to help fund Russia’s war against Ukraine.
At the very least, he asks that Western players avoid playing Atomic Heart, adding that Mundfish has failed to make any statement condemning Vladimir Putin or the war.
It’ll be interesting to see how Sony, Microsoft, and Valve respond to the request. The games industry as a whole took a very firm stance against Russia over the war, with near enough every major publisher pulling their games from sale in the country. EA even went as far as to retroactively remove Russian teams from its sports titles like FIFA.
‘We also call to limit the distribution of this game in other countries due to its toxicity, the potential collection of user data information and the possibility of their transfer to third parties in Russia, as well as the potential use of money raised from game purchases to wage war against Ukraine,’ says Bornyakov in a statement to dev.ua (translated by Game World Observer).
‘Therefore, we urge all users to ignore this game. We also want to emphasize for the Western audience that the developers of the game did not come out with a public statement condemning the Putin regime and the bloody war that Russia has unleashed against Ukraine.’
It may be that Bornyakov is unaware but he makes no mention of the game being a Game Pass title, meaning it’s available for free to all subscribers from this week.
The closest Mundfish has come to distancing themselves from Russia is a claim that they are a ‘pro-peace organisation’, although at the same time they avoided mentioning Ukraine or the war.
‘We want to assure you that Mundfish is a developer and studio with a global team focused on an innovative game and is undeniably a pro-peace organisation against violence against people,’ it wrote.
Suspicions were heighted when the decision was made to release Atomic Heart on February 21, exactly one year after Putin signed a decree that recognised two eastern Ukrainian regions – Donetsk and Luhansk – as independent entities, which led to the war kicking off just two days later.
It could just be an unfortunate coincidence, but it’s hard to imagine Mundfish weren’t aware of the timing and begs the question why it didn’t push the game back an extra week to avoid any unwelcome connotations.
In the end though, the simplest reason not to play Atomic Heart is because it’s just not very good. Despite some excellent art design and fun magic abilities, it’s a very flawed homage to Bioshock, that features one of the most unlikeable protagonists we’ve seen in recent memory.
Atomic Heart is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
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