Anyone who plays or even views Atomic Heart knows the game is slathered in Russian themes as part of its alternate history narrative that imagines a sci-fi USSR utopia. There’s also the matter of the game’s subject matter. Those connections raised concerns regarding not just Atomic Heart‘s possible ties to prominent state-owned industries but the idea that its success could in some way fund Gazprom’s controversial endeavors and other possible government agendas (including the invasion of Ukraine). What is VKPlay? A Russian digital distribution service owned by the Russian social media platform VKontakte (essentially the Russian equivalent of Facebook), which is also owned by Gazprom. Furthermore, outlets discovered that Atomic Heart will release on VKPlay in Russia. That company is based in Russia and was founded by Anatoliy Paliy, who was previously an executive for the Russian state-owned energy company, Gazprom. Among those concerns were references to Russian investors and other organizations that could influence Mundfish’s practices.Įurogamer, PC Gamer, and other outlets expanded on that last point by shining a light on one of Mundfish’s primary investors, GEM Capital.

More recently, a Ukrainian YouTuber named Harenko posted a video called “Please, Don’t Buy Atomic Heart.” He criticized, among many other aspects of the game, the developer’s “we don’t comment on politics” stance and brought up concerns about many aspects of the game and Mundfish’s practices. While it has been pointed out that their refusal to comment further could be due to a number of legal and procedural factors, their approach struck many gamers and industry members as vague at best and worrying at worst. While that is not necessarily an issue in and of itself, Mundfish drew criticism earlier this year when they made numerous vague and non-commital comments about their stance on the war in Ukraine and allegedly began blocking users who asked further questions about their political stance.

Atomic heart what kind of game