Amidst its war with Ukraine, Russia is using games like Minecraft to push pro-Kremlin values onto unsuspecting players.
When the Russia-Ukraine war began, almost the entirety of the video game industry unambiguously expressed support for Ukraine. EA deleted Russian teams from its sports games and major publishers like Sony and Nintendo pulled their businesses out of Russia altogether.
This has prompted Russia to try and cultivate its own gaming industry, with President Vladimir Putin pushing the country’s own ‘cyberchampionship’ gaming tournament.
It’s also reported that Russia is making use of certain video games to spread propaganda about its invasion of Ukraine, in particular Minecraft and Roblox.
Considering both games allow players to create and customise their own content, they are, admittedly, perfect choices for ensuring pro-Russia messaging can reach a wide audience.
Not to mention, Minecraft and Roblox are especially popular with young children who are likely to be less familiar with the exact details of the conflict.
The New York Times reports coming across user created worlds in Minecraft and Roblox that depict Russian parades and the Russian flag placed over Ukrainian territory.
One in-game Minecraft concert, held to celebrate Russia Day, was even hosted and streamed by a Russian government official; one whose mother is a close ally of Putin.
Putin himself has already stated that video games can be used to promote education ‘within the framework of universal human values and within the framework of patriotism.’
Roblox in particular has become very popular in Russia in the last few years, perhaps thanks to so many other games pulling out, and a 2021 report by Wired suggests it’s become a hotbed for fascists and anti-Semitism.
Neither Microsoft (which owns Minecraft) nor Roblox Corporation have issued a comment on their products being used to spread propaganda.
UPDATE
Roblox Corporation has since provided us with a statement assuring it intends to remove such content as soon as possible:
‘We work tirelessly to maintain a platform that is safe, civil and inclusive and we have strict Community Standards, which prohibit the portrayal of real-world sensitive events,’ says a representative.
‘We are committed to removing this type of content as soon as possible, and we use a combination of manual and automated detection tools to remove such experiences swiftly. We also encourage anyone to report content or behaviour that may not comply with our Community Standards by using our Report Abuse feature. We have a dedicated team of thousands who act on those reports.’
Email [email protected], leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter, and sign-up to our newsletter.
MORE : Journalists use Counter-Strike to sneak news stories of Ukraine invasion into Russia
MORE : World Of Tanks director fired for supporting Russia against Ukraine
MORE : Metro Exodus series creator Dmitry Glukhovsky put on Russian wanted list
Follow Metro Gaming on Twitter and email us at [email protected]
To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.
For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.
![GameCentral Newsletter](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/client-mu-plugins/metro-newsletters/signups/images/gamecentral-signup-logo.png)
Sign up to all the exclusive gaming content, latest releases before they're seen on the site.
Share this with