Ukrainian government calls for Atomic Heart to be discontinued from worldwide sale

The Ukrainian government asks Sony, Microsoft, and Valve to stop selling Atomic Heart in Ukraine and other countries.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s first deputy minister and minister of Digital Transformation, has officially asked Sony, Microsoft, and Valve to stop international sales of the Atomic Heart game. In addition, the Ukrainian government is asking them to remove the game from digital stores such as PlayStation Store, Microsoft Store, and Steam, as they had stated last February.

Fedorov asks these companies not to sell the game digitally in Ukraine, which is not sold on CD in the country. Now they are asking that they stop its sale worldwide due to the game’s ties to Russia and its potential danger of funding the war in Ukraine. At the moment, neither the game’s developer Focus Entertainment, nor the companies have given a response to the petition.

Ukrainian government calls for Atomic Heart to stop being sold

First Deputy Minister Mykhailo Fedorov published a message on Twitter with the attached documents of the petition to ban the sale of gambling.

“Official requests to ban selling Atomic Heart game. I do believe neither of these businesses support bloody regimes, murders or romanticizing communism. Brand new level of Russian digital propaganda – using gaming industry.”

The petition is going to:

• Jim Ryan (CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment)
• Kenichiro Yoshida (President of Sony)
• Gabe Newell (CEO of Valve)
• Brad Smith (President, Microsoft)

In brief, Mykhailo Fedorov notes that the game’s development studio, Mundfish, is Russian. He further adds:

“There is a potential risk that the money obtained from purchases of the game […] will be used to finance the war against Ukraine.”

On the other hand, he adds that.

“working with Russian entities is not in line with current economic sanctions policies against Russia.”

It further points out that the game promotes the communist regime and Soviet symbology, which violates Ukrainian legislation, and recalls that Soviet Russia was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians” in Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia.

Uncertainty for Mundfish developers

Shooter Atomic Heart is a role-playing and puzzle game set in a retro-futuristic dystopian Soviet past. With developers spread all over the world, Mundfish is a development studio based in Cyprus.

Nevertheless, there are no responses to other claims against them, one of which is that their website was used to collect data for Russian intelligence services. Another accusation is that the origin of the financing of the study and the location of its offices are unknown.

To respond to those accusations, they have only made two brief comments on Twitter in which they state:

“We are an organization for peace against violence towards people.”

They further add that:

“We do not comment on politics or religion. Rest assured; we are a global team focused on getting Atomic Heart into the hands of gamers everywhere.”

Header: Mundfish