Chornozem Interactive, the studio behind the walking simulator «Echo of Pripyat», has now publicly apologized and said that sales in Russia have been canceled after negotiations with the team.
A scandal erupted in the Ukrainian gaming industry: one of Chornozem Interactive’s partners, screenwriter Andriy Chebankov, discovered that the game was being advertised in Russian «vkontakte», and further screenshots from the working chat only confirmed the studio’s plans to sell the game in Russia:
In correspondence, the head of development says that sales in Russia were planned «from the beginning»and also compared his own game with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl, which, unlike GSC Game World’s creation, allegedly will not have a Russian language. The rest of the Chornozem Interactive team criticized the CEO’s idea, and some decided to leave the studio after the news:
Then, under the post, the following appeared commentary (probably from the same development manager):
«Dear Andriy, thank you for trying to ruin several months of hard work and sleepless nights for us. We were going to use the proceeds from the Russian sales in Ukraine, mainly for the Armed Forces, and you know it».
The studio has now released a statement on the game’s official Twitter account apologizing for its plans. The post says that the screenshots of the correspondence do not reflect the full picture, and that the proceeds from the game’s sales were planned to be used to help Ukraine.
«Initially, we did consider entering the Russian market. This was due to the desire to find funds to finance humanitarian initiatives aimed at helping Ukraine in connection with the war and to assist the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, after careful analysis and reflection, we decided to abandon this idea. This decision was made after a conversation with our team».
The full text of the statement is available in the post:
We can only hope that the position on selling the game in Russia belonged to only one person, who, unfortunately, thus made a bad advertisement for «Echo of Pripyat» in Ukraine. We sent a request for comment to the studio to clarify this point, since not a few people had a hand in the game, and most of them might not have been aware of their employer’s plans. We have not yet received a response, but we will update the text as soon as it arrives