World Of Tanks director fired for supporting Russia against Ukraine

metro.co.uk:

The creative director of World Of Tanks has left publisher Wargaming, who have made a £745,000 donation to the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Although there are a number of Ukrainian video game developers, including STALKER 2 maker GSC Game World, Russia, despite its size, has very few that are known internationally. World Of Tanks maker Wargaming is often thought to be an exception but they’re actually from Belarus and headquartered in Cyprus.

Wargaming has remained sensibly quiet since the invasion of Ukraine and has reacted quickly to a Facebook post from now former creative director Sergey Burkatovskiy, who wrote in support of the Russian army and separatist groups in the east of Ukraine.

The message was seen as especially abhorrent because Wargaming employs hundreds of developers in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, which is currently under increasingly barbarous attack by Russian forces.

For the latest updates on the Russia-Ukraine war, visit our live blog: Russia-Ukraine live

In a statement to Cyber.Sports.ru, Wargaming said, as translated by PC Gamer, that the comments were Burkatovskiy’s ‘personal opinion, which categorically does not coincide with the position of the company’.

A day later Burkatovskiy posted on Facebook that he had ‘broke up with the VG [possibly WG, depending on the translation], with Wargaming later confirming to PC Gamer that he had in fact left the company.

When the invasion first began Wargaming cancelled all advertising worldwide and while it has now restarted it everywhere outside of Ukraine, it now features no images of advancing tanks or military vehicles.

Wargaming has also made the equivalent of a £745,000 donation to the Ukrainian Red Cross, along with the following statement:

‘At Wargaming, the safety