On Steam, the biggest gaming platform on PC, there are multiple community-run Ukrainian curator pages dedicated to documenting games developed by Russians.
One called “Обережно, русняві ігри” has over 20,000 followers, while two others have approximately 2,000 followers each.
The big one run by PlayUA lists the inclusion criteria as follows:
- Games made by purely Russian studios (irrespective of the publisher).
- Games made by purely Russian developers that mask by having moved to or registered via another country.
- Games published by Russian publishers, even if they are based in a different country (e.g. Cyprus, Poland, etc).
The main point raised to justify the existence of the curators is that a boycott would decrease the number of sales and thus of taxes paid fueling the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The argument makes sense, especially when it comes to big studios like Saber with dozens if not hundreds of employees working from Russia on games like Space Marine 2.
However, this story is about the almost medieval witch hunting by the curators as of late. The first apparent red flag was Banana being marked as a Russian game with no evidence provided when inquired, but the latest case in point is the newly released Tiny Glade.
Based on the publicly available information, Tiny Glade was developed by two people from Sweden: Tomasz Stachowiak, originally from Poland, and Anastasia Opara, originally from Russia. Going by Anastasia’s LinkedIn, she studied in the Netherlands from 2013 to 2017, and has worked in Sweden since 2016 for companies including EA.
As accurately noted by the curator, it is common after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine for Russians to set up fronts in other countries to hide their country of origin and bypass the international sanctions, but there has been no evidence of that here.
In February 2013, before the invasion of Crimea, Anastasia posted a screenshot of a letter on having been accepted to the Breda University of Applied Sciences. Later in 2013, she posted to Instagram, saying “The last day in Moscow”, and indeed, the location seen in a subsequent 2013 photo is the same university in the Netherlands. In 2018, Anastasia gave a presentation at the university in person. In 2021, she was introduced by Microsoft as being based in Stockholm, Sweden. These facts fully support her LinkedIn information.
Anastasia’s X.com profile contains 🕊💙💛, pointing at her support for Ukraine. This is further underscored by the game being one of the few to have been translated to Ukrainian, with Anastasia having personally responded to the related requests in 2023.
Now turning to the PlayUA curator’s Discord server, their first line of arguing to support the inclusion of the game went like this:
- Moderator Івасик-Телесик recommends the game.
- The technical director of PlayUA, UwU-03, says “I believe it’s Russian” and adds “there was something to that end but I don’t remember”.
- Івасик-Телесик says “Well fuck, Anastasia Opara is indeed a ruskie from Crimea”.
- Moderator Stlstrm adds “that has moved to Sweden”.
- Івасик-Телесик responds “or maybe she hasn’t”.
- Stlstrm says “No, she hasn’t”.
- Івасик-Телесик asks that the game is added to the curator.
- Another PlayUA editor, AbsoKulikov, asks for evidence.
- Івасик-Телесик refers to “the first Instagram account from the search” as related to Simferopol, Crimea.
- Stlstrm includes a link to an Instagram account of a girl from Crimea who has the same name as the developer — though clearly she’s not the same person: one has brown eyes, the other blue.
- User Mushroom points out that the face is different.
By that last point, the game had already been recommended against by the curator, with its 20,000 users discouraged from buying it, which is likely affecting its sales in Ukraine.
UwU-03 then referenced some website called RocketReach which claims that Anastasia’s location is Moscow, Russia, though no date or evidence is provided on the website. The same user pointed to her parents — perhaps to highlight they are Russian — via what looks like her father’s website. That sums up their evidence to date.
The other Ukrainian curator followed suit and recommended against the game, offering no explanation. At least one Telegram channel trusted the same PlayUA curator’s review enough to claim that the money received by Anastasia will go to a bank account in Russia.
