CSGO map has a secret room, full of news stories banned by Russia
A CSGO map contains a secret room wherein players can view stories about the Russian military’s activities in Ukraine, which would otherwise be banned under the Kremlin’s laws curtailing free press. The Valve FPS game is currently not subject to this type of censorship in Russia, allowing Helsingin Sanomat, a Finnish newspaper, to build and share the Counter-Strike map as a way of exposing Russian CSGO players to facts about the invasion of Ukraine.
Constructed by two experienced CSGO map builders and commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat, ‘de_voyna,’ (‘voyna’ means ‘war’ in Russian), replicates a destroyed Eastern-European city. On first glance, it is similar to many other custom-made Counter-Strike maps.
But Helsingin Sanomat has constructed de_voyna as a way of informing Russian CSGO players about what is happening in Ukraine. In a statement provided to PCGamesN, Helsingin Sanomat’s editor-in-chief, Antero Mukka, outlines the objective behind the CSGO arena.
“Russians have very little chance to receive independent information about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” Mukka explains. “However, the gaming world and gamers themselves are still left unchecked. That’s why we decided to hide a newspaper inside the world’s most popular war game.
“We built a map of a Slavic city devastated by a war, inside the game, with a secret room that offers Russian gamers an uncensored access to the horrors of the war in Ukraine in their native language.”
When you die on de_voyna, you are able to enter spectator mode and tour the map in typical CSGO fashion. With the free camera, however, you can also find a hidden room, which Helsingin Sanomat has decorated with Russian-language versions of its articles about the invasion of Ukraine.
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