Enlarge / How Soviet-era Russia looks inside Atomic Heart, at least at the beginning. (credit: Mundfish / Focus Entertainment)

Ukraine’s Digital Ministry has said it will ask Steam, Microsoft, and Sony to remove Atomic Heart from their gaming platforms in Ukraine, and possibly elsewhere, pointing to its retro-Communist aesthetic and reported “Russian roots.”

As reported by the Ukrainian tech news/job site Dev.ua (Google translation), Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation (which also provided a statement in English to PCGamesN) writes that Atomic Heart “has Russian roots and romanticizes communist ideology and the Soviet Union.” The Ministry cites the game’s “toxicity,” “potential data collection of users,” and use of funds from the game “to conduct a war against Ukraine.” The statement asks for an outright ban on the game in Ukraine but calls on other countries to consider “limiting distribution” of the game.

The Ministry also cites “media reports” regarding development funds coming from Russian enterprises and banks under sanction and “systematically important for the Russian government” (according to Google translation).