WTF?! Aside from the bugs, Stalker 2 is a tremendous recreation, however that is a press release Russia is unlikely to agree with. A weird new disinformation marketing campaign that targets the title claims Stalker 2 is secretly being utilized by the Ukraine authorities to determine and find conscripts for the struggle in opposition to Russia.
The marketing campaign entails a video that includes what seems to be a watermark from tech publication Wired, writes 404media. The clip, which is spreading on Telegram and being emailed on to journalists, claims that an embedded program was found within the code of Stalker 2 that collects participant information and transmits it to the developer’s servers.
The video goes on to assert that the knowledge being collected on gamers consists of machine, title, IP tackle, and present location, and is transmitted each second. The rationale for this information assortment is to assist the Ukraine authorities find residents appropriate for mobilization, apparently.
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The video additionally falsely states that GSC Recreation World, the Ukrainian developer of Stalker 2, made a cope with Ukraine’s authorities to obtain funding for the sport. In alternate, it might assist discover “males appropriate for mobilization.”
The video recommends boycotting the sport or taking part in it utilizing a VPN.
It ought to come as no shock in any respect to study that the video shouldn’t be from Wired. It seems to come back from the identical supply behind the Operation Matryoshka and Doppelganger campaigns designed to unfold anti-Ukraine messages, waste reporters and fact-checkers’ time, and attempt to make folks mistrust information shops.
Russia has been concentrating on Stalker 2 and its builders because the invasion of Ukraine started in 2022. GSC Recreation World has endured fixed cyberattacks, together with one occasion during which hackers threatened to launch photographs and art work from the sport if the corporate didn’t change its angle towards gamers from Russia and Belarus, and apologize for the “unworthy angle” in the direction of peculiar gamers from these international locations. It additionally needed Russian-language localization introduced again to the sport and the unbanning of the “NF Star” profile from the sport studio’s Discord channel.
Some GSC Recreation World staff stopped engaged on Stalker 2 to struggle in opposition to Russian forces following the invasion. One in all these, Volodymyr Anatoliyovych Yezhov, was killed on December 22, 2022, through the Battle of Bakhmut.
Whereas many GSC Recreation World staff have been relocated to Prague, some builders continued to work on Stalker 2 in Ukraine amid relentless Russian assaults. You possibly can watch the documentary about these struggles within the video embeded above.
