If they die virtually, players of the popular shooting game Counter Strike meet the real war. The Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat has built a secret room in one of the game’s environments with war news on the walls. In this way, the journalists hope to reach Russian gamers, despite the strict censorship in their country.
Since the start of the war, the Russian government has made access to critical coverage of the war in Ukraine virtually impossible. The last two independent media outlets were banned early last year. But gaming remained possible, also in Counter Strike: Global Offensivethe world’s most played shooting game at the moment.
Players of ‘CS:GO’ can choose from different worlds to shoot each other digitally. Everyone can add their own worlds to the game, which other players can then use. That brought Helsingin Sanomat to the idea of designing a new environment and hiding information about the war in it. The ‘architects’ of the playing field want to remain anonymous because they are afraid of being harassed.
Map of attacks on civilians
The new card, named ‘de_voyna’ after the Russian word for ‘war’, is based on a ‘Slavic city’. Khrushchev flats, deserted streets lined with military vehicles, a war memorial reinforced with sandbags: it’s hard not to see a resemblance to Ukraine.
The secret of the playing environment is underground. If a player ‘dies’ and can temporarily fly through walls and floors, they will find a room filled with war news. On one of the walls is a map of Russian attacks on civilian targets, in one corner hangs a photo report about a bombing raid. “So far 70,000 Russian soldiers have died,” reads a text on the table, which has also been translated into Russian.
It is not known how many players have already used the card. Nearly a thousand people have downloaded it, but that doesn’t mean they include virtual shootings in it. The potential audience is large: according to analysis website Leetify more than one in ten Counter-Strike players are from Russia, and at the time of writing a million players behind their computer.
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