Russian disinformation is trying to incite a boycott of Stalker 2 with the claim that it will draft you into a war in Ukraine.

Stalker is not the first time that it has been at the center of a Russian propaganda effort against Ukraine. According to 404 Media, journalists opened their inboxes recently to find a curious anomaly. A video purportedly by Wired claimed that Stalker 2 was helping the Ukrainian government to "locate citizens that are suitable for mobilization", using data-mining technologies that were impossible to turn off.

The video claims that "an embedded program has been discovered in the code of the game" which collects data from players and sends it to developer's servers. The video claims that information about your IP, name, device and location is intended to help Ukraine's state find potential conscripts, as part of a funding agreement between Stalker dev GSC Game World, and the Ukrainian government. It encourages viewers to either boycott the game or use a VPN.

The video is not from Wired, and none of this is true.

The video appears to be from the same murky source as the recent Matryoshka or Doppelganger campaigns. Anti-Ukrainian misinformation is spread by trolls who impersonate western news outlets. They use Volodymyr Zelenskyy to play up western fatigue and waste the time of journalists and fact checkers.

The campaigns work by creating a flurry of nonsense - a fake story, allegedly from Deutsche Welle, about a Ukrainian artist who is trying to destroy the Eiffel tower, another about a Ukrainian thief trying to steal from the Paris catacombs and a plethora of supposed pictures of anti Ukraine graffiti in western cities - and sending them to journalists for "verification". The fake videos are also circulated on social media, such as Telegram, and overwhelm media outlets that don't just ignore the bogus reports, but instead try to debunk them.

It's not surprising that Stalker caught the attention of Russia's propagandists. Stalker 2 is one of Ukraine’s most popular videogames. It has become a symbol for the country's resilience. Some GSC developers stopped working on the games to fight against Russia when the country invaded. At least one of them, Volodymyr Yezhov, was killed in action. The fact that the game was released despite the invasion and the forced relocation to Czechia has made it a symbol of resilience.

Yes, Russian propaganda is adamant about it. What I find most striking is the part where the video encourages viewers to either boycott the game, or play it using a VPN. (This exhortation is falsely attributed to Ukrainian war correspondent Roman Bochkala.) This video seems to be more aimed at Russians and I think I understand why.

Stalker has become so popular in Russia that I have had language teachers who are a bit of a snob from the country, but they knew the game very well. Stalker 2 had been eagerly anticipated before the invasion of Ukraine. GSC's refusal to translate the game into Russian caused a great deal of anger. In a bizarre act of protest, one former Russian fan leaked console ports of the original game that were not yet announced.

I suspect, on some level the Russian government would rather its citizens did not engage with anything which might prompt them to remember the humanity of the people in Ukraine, or that presents Ukrainian culture, and struggle, in a positive way. Videos like this are just as much an attempt to scare off former Stalker fans from trying Stalker 2, as they are attempts to undermine and confuse western perceptions about Ukraine.