Pro-Russian propaganda or just a bit of fun? Why Atomic Heart is this year's most controversial video game

stuff.co.nz:

ANALYSIS: I’m on top of the world looking down on a pixillated worker's paradise. Monorails twinkle, suspension bridges shimmer, drones whirr like dystopian worker bees. A statue looms through the clouds: a huge vengeful woman with a sword high in one hand, a giant atom cradled in the other. “We are now flying over the majestic Call of the Motherland monument – erected in 1949 to mark the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II,” says a soothing female voice.

This tableau is unfolding early in a controversial new video game, Atomic Heart. Call of the Motherland, the statue past which I am whizzing at speed, is constructed from nothing but code. But its inspiration is a very real chunk of Stalinist brutalism: the 300-foot-tall (91m) Motherland Calls, which stands above the Volga River and pays shrieking tribute to the dead of Stalingrad.

It’s one of dozens of references to the Soviet Union at the height of its power squirrelled into this cartoonish shooter. And these winks and nods towards Stalinism are proving controversial. Atomic Heart is accused of distorting history by depicting Soviet Russia as a social and technological triumph. There have been claims, moreover, that it is larded with ugly slurs against Ukraine. And accusations that the publisher has covert links to Moscow.

That final charge has proved stickiest. Developer Mundfish is based in Cyprus but its chief executive previously worked at the Russian communication company Mail.RU. Mundfish has also received funding from GEM Capital, a Cyprus-based investment fund established by a former chief executive of Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom. Moreover in Russia, the game is distributed by VK Play – part of the VKontakte social media platform owned by – yes