Ukraine’s Digital Ministry has said it will ask Steam, Microsoft, and Sony to remove Atomic Heart from their gaming platforms in Ukraine, and possibly elsewhere, pointing to both its retro-Communist aesthetic and reported « Russian roots. »

As reported by the Ukrainian tech news/job site Dev.ua (Google translation), Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation (which also provided a statement in English to PCGamesN) writes that Atomic Heart « has Russian roots and romanticizes communist ideology and the Soviet Union. » The Ministry cites the game’s « toxicity, » « potential data collection of users, » and use of funds from the game « to conduct a war against Ukraine. » The statement asks for an outright ban on the game in Ukraine but calls on other countries to consider « limiting distribution » of the game.

The Ministry also cites « media reports » regarding development funds coming from Russian enterprises and banks under sanction and « systematically important for the Russian government » (according to Google translation).

« We would also like 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 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Deputy Minister Oleksandr Bornyakov said in the statement.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine all but ended the international game industry’s presence in that country. In March 2022, every major console abandoned the country, and major developers halted operations and sales, following direct appeals by Ukrainian authorities. Atomic Heart is currently for sale on the Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam (PC) marketplaces.

There’s a lot to unpack, and some of it involves entities that are inherently difficult to pry into. Here’s what has been reported so far and some insight into the game itself and its themes.

How Russian is Atomic Heart’s developer, really?

At a minimum, Atomic Heart is not entirely distanced from Russia or inactive in its highly state-influenced economy. The game is exclusively available in Russia through VK Play, an arm of the VK Group, which is run by a Putin ally and son of a former prime minister. VK Group and VKontakte, the most popular social network in Russia, are majority owned by the media arm of energy giant Gazprom, which itself is majority-owned by the Russian state. Mundfish’s CEO once worked as a creative director for Mail.ru, VK’s original entity.

The developer, Mundfish, cites Cyprus as its international headquarters but has previously shown off its Russia-based offices in a video tour. AIN.capital, a site focused on Central and Eastern European tech news, cited Mundfish’s Russian store website privacy policy in January as disclosing that user data could be transferred to Russian state authorities, including the tax office and FSB, Russia’s modern state security agency. AIN.capital also cites a legal address in Russia in the policy. Mundfish denied collecting data in a response to GamesRadar, stating that its privacy statement was « outdated and wrong, and should have been removed years ago. » The Russian store has seemingly been removed from Mundfish’s site.

An extravagant promotional party for the game was held in November 2022 for Russian press, according to Game World Observer and on-the-scene tweets. Soviet-style banners and signs read « Glory to Soviet engineers » and « Comrade, join the society of the future! » Gaming press events are not known for their subtlety or strict fidelity to a game’s full narrative—in this case, Atomic Heart‘s over-the-top echo of mid-century Soviet propaganda is on display, not the team’s beliefs or heritage. Yet holding this lavish event for a Russian audience, with Soviet-era stylings, while the country is engaged in a bloody war with Ukraine, implies a certain willingness to engage with status-quo Russia.

Mundfish’s investors include Tencent, the Chinese gaming giant, and GEM Capital. GEM Capital’s founder, Anatoliy Paliy, formerly served as first deputy general director for a Gazprom division, and GEM is actively involved in the Russian energy market. Like Mundfish itself, GEM claimed to games journalist Kirk McKeand in January that it was now based in Cyprus and had no Russian investments. You can read more about the hard-to-prove but quite plausible web of connections between GEM, Gazprom, and the Ukrainian invasion at PC Gamer’s detailed explainer.