A well established Russian disinformation operation appears to have set its sights on Stalker 2, the hotly anticipated shooter set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone that was developed in Ukraine while the country is actively fighting Russia’s invasion.
The campaign is spreading a fake vertical video with a WIRED watermark on Telegram and in emails directly to journalists, which falsely claims the game is being used to enlist more Ukrainian soldiers and is secretly collecting private data from players.
“Ukrainian game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 helps the government locate citizens suitable for mobilization,” text in the video says over gameplay footage of Stalker 2. “An embedded program was discovered in the game’s code that collects player data and transmits it to the developer’s servers. The program collects data about the device, name, IP address and current location of the player. The information is transmitted every second.”
The video falsely claims that the Stalker 2’s developer, GSC Game World, made a deal with the government of Ukraine to get funding for the game, and that it would in exchange help it “find men suitable for mobilization.”
GSC Game World did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but there is no evidence that Stalker 2 is doing anything like what the video claims, and the video was not actually produced by WIRED.
The fake WIRED video
The video is also being pushed with the same methods and by the same network that previously targeted 404 Media, which I covered in March. The French press agency AFP, which along with many other news outlets was also targeted by the same disinformation campaign, previously dubbed it “Operation Matryoshka.” As researchers from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) told me at the time, the goal is to flood Telegram, social media, and journalists’ inboxes with false stories that usually paint NATO countries and Ukraine in a bad light, waste reporters’ time, and make people distrust news outlets more broadly.
While various narratives pushed by this network have previously made the news, I get dozens of emails pushing fake stories like the one about Stalker 2 every day, and the vast majority of them get no traction aside from a few tweets, which are often removed by Twitter.
However, it’s notable that Stalker 2 has gained the attention and ire of Russian propagandists. The first game in the series, which is set in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine and was developed in the country, was released in 2007. It was a hugely influential cult hit with a unique mix of intense simulation, sci-fi horror, and open world role-playing that was never properly replicated until the release of Stalker 2 last week. Understandably, in addition to being a game that a dedicated fanbase has been anticipating for almost two decades, Stalker 2 has become a symbol of Ukrainian perseverance in the face of Russia’s invasion in 2022. While many of its developers were relocated to Prague, some developers finished the games under Russian bombardment and with its team members being deployed to the frontlines in an active war.
Given that it has become such a symbol in Ukraine and around the world, it’s not a surprise that a Russian disinformation campaign would try to undermine it.
