Company of Heroes 2 kind of sucks. Or, if you're Russian, it sucks quite a lot. The portrayal of Russian forces in the game kicked up so much controversy that the Russian distributor 1C-SoffKlab (I assume this Charlie-Foxtrot of a name is the result of corporate mergers) stopped distributing it in Russia and CIS countries. SEGA told Videogamer.com that they're taking this very seriously and investigating claims.
In essence, Russians are either not seeing the game ever again (good for them) or will get it once controversy dies down. Because the claims are that the game is historically inaccurate and closer to Nazi propaganda than historical fact. I say that the campaign is just badly written: they promised to show how hard was life on Eastern Front... and went overboard with it, cranking stuff up to 11.
And if you want the Russian perspective, above is a quite popular video arguing against the points of the game. This has to be taken with a grain of salt, though: while the Soviets weren't so cartoonishly evil as they appear in the game, they weren't the good guys in any way - Lithuanians know that quite well.
In any case, can't wait to see how this pans out!
Posted 08-08-2013, 03:34
In Soviet Russia CoH 2 plays you!
Posted 07-08-2013, 21:56
Taking only the bad parts and overblowing them is propaganda. In case of CoH2 - looks like the case of awful Hollywood history rather than deliberate propaganda. That video has a bias in other way, but not as bad as the game's campaign. The reaction in Russia among some gamers and distributor is also too hot headed. Don't like - don't buy it, consider it BS (rightfully) - then explain why it is BS. Banning it would do much more harm than good. If this reaches some ambitious politicians - well, stupidity of current Russian parliament has already given a lot of reasons for facepalms.
As for calling Soviets the bad guys - history is more complex than our very biased school history books. Every big participant in that war had their atrocities, some just went much further than the others. Stalin wasn't a good guy, but isn't it nice to live in Vlinius rather than Wilno? :) History doesn't really fit into 1984 narrative of "they are bad and always were bad in everything".
Posted 07-08-2013, 21:38
That...is actually not that unexpected now that I think about it