A rather peculiar accusation has recently surfaced against Atomic Heartma il team Mundfish has denied categorically that the game or the linked internet site collect user information to supply them to the Russian government.
The idea is somewhat bizarre but given the times that run it could also be plausible: the accusation was made by the AIN.Capital website, which reports that in the privacy management regulations of the Atomic Heart official website, there is a passage in which it is reported that user data could be collected and shared with Russian government authorities, in particular the tax office and the FSB, or the federal security office.
According to reports from the site, this passage is visible only in Russian language and not in English, but the link provided, at the moment, returns an error. Furthermore, AIN.Capital accuses Mundfish of being a firm that receives funding from Russian government organizations such as Gazprom and that, despite being based in Cyprus, continues to maintain a Moscow address for its main offices.
“Our game and our site they do not collect information or data” Mundfish said in response to the allegations, asked by GamesRadar. “The site’s privacy claims are old and incorrect and should have been removed years ago. We closed up shop to assure our fans of the integrity of the studio and its products. We apologize for any confusion that may have arisen regarding this matter.”
In fact, the answer has some rather dubious elements, as it seems to admit the previous presence of this passage in the privacy regulations, simply reporting that it was “dated”. We may think that this is a standard formula used by contracts of this type in Russian media, but in such a situation it can leave room for doubt.
Mundfish has declared itself an “international team”, and “an organization that advocates peace against violence”. We await at this point to see if there will be any changes to the official site, while at the moment the team has not commented to GamesRadar whether or not it has collected any data from users in the past.
In any case, Atomic Heart has the release date scheduled for February 21 on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, also available on day one on Xbox Game Pass. It recently entered the gold phase, so it shouldn’t be further delayed.
