The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now spilled over into an unusual new front: an ongoing pissing match between actual Russian military and troll factories and a Ukrainian video-game studio that’s yielded not just a potential ban on a popular video game, but a bounty on a Russian warship as well.
The latest installment of the acclaimed “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” first-person shooter series currently faces a ban in Russia due to developer GSC Game World’s financial support of the Ukrainian military amid the ongoing invasion, Meduza reports. In response to this threat and the related disinformation campaign against GSC, the game studio has offered a literal bounty for the destruction of the Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich.
This year has really screwed with my wartime Bingo card: I didn’t have “North Korea joins the war,” let alone GSC joining it.
So how'd we get here? Let me try to explain.
First, tensions were already brewing since the first game in the series, "Shadow of Chernobyl," was released in 2007. Set in an alternate version of modern Ukraine, the country suffers a second Chernobyl disaster that triggers anomalies too numerous and weird to get into here. Imagine an entire season of "The Twilight Zone" or “Black Mirror” set in an irradiated hellscape. The protagonist of the game is an amnesiac Ukrainian stalker in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone -- and a major antagonist is a Russian stalker.
Now, pop culture that's critical of former Soviet or modern Russian leadership is often poorly received by the Kremlin, but it's not like they lose it over every game or movie that critiques Russia, which is why the initial installment -- which sold more than 2 million copies -- didn’t prompt a major response from Moscow.
But when the long-delayed sequel finally received a 2022 release date a decade after its initial promised release, things went to shit: Russia invaded Ukraine in February of that year and almost took over GSC during its march on Kyiv. GSC fled the country, with the studio’s CEOs, brothers Serhiy and Evgeniy Hryhorovych, taking the company to Prague and resumed operations.
In November, the brothers struck back, with Serhiy offering his personal Rolls-Royce, valued at around $500,000, to anyone who could sink the Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich. (Funnily enough, the car's vanity license plate is "Bayraktar," a reference to the Turkish-made drones that have conducted hundreds of operations over Ukraine.)
It’s worth noting that this may sound a bit odd because the brothers use the Ukrainian spelling of their name, and Russia obviously uses Russian spellings for their ships, but Hryhorovych and Grigorovich are the same name (think of Smith, Smyth and Smithe in English). Indeed, Serhiy claimed in a recent interview with a Ukrainian YouTuber that he targeted that specific frigate because it “puts my last name to shame.”
Whether Serhiy was serious or not, it got the CEO, the company and the next installment of “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” a ton of free press coverage ahead of its late November release date. And this time around, Russia seems quite unhappy about the freelancing Ukrainian entrepreneurs trying to bounty their way through the Russian navy: after threatening to ban the game, Moscow is now waging an information war against it on at least two fronts.
First, a pretty low-effort review bombing campaign. Russian players allegedly can give the game a terrible review and collect five rubles for every 200 views the bad review gets. Since that's almost a nickel at the current exchange rate, color me curious about how effective that campaign will be. (Also, check back to Hip-Pocket Gaming for my upcoming review: “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: A Terrible Game with Terrible Spelling that’s Barely Worth ₽6,445.”)
But the larger, more significant disinformation campaign is the rumor, seemingly Russian in origin, that "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2" collects user information to help Ukrainian authorities conscript male players who are “suitable for mobilization.” Maybe that could be effective? Plenty of people don't want to serve on the front lines of the Russo-Ukraine War, but I expect a rumor that a video game-assisted conscription effort would be seen as more alarming.
It’s unclear how this new front between Russia and Ukraine might expand. For now, though, expect that the Admiral Grigorovich will keep sailing, and "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2" will keep selling.
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