Russian anti-Ukrainian propaganda had made its way into 'Minecraft'.
Players of the Microsoft-owned game in Russia have brought to virtual life January’s battle for Soledar - a city in Ukraine, the neighbouring country that President Vladimir Putin invaded in February 2022 - and videos of game play were shared on the social media platform VKontakte.
According to the New York Times, Clint Watts - the head of Microsoft's threat analysis team - told researchers at New York University that the Wagner Group were pushing “malign narratives” that were in support of the Kremlin on Discord and Steam, which is thought to have upped army recruitment.
He added: “The propaganda mainly seeks to make Wagner and the Russian military look cool and menacing.”
Microsoft - who according to the same outlet did not answer specific questions regarding cited examples - asserted that they remove content that goes against its community standards.
The Russian government marked Russia Day in June with a concert inside Minecraft and last month Putin expressed his intention to make video games as a way to up feelings of “patriotism”.
He said: “A game should help a person develop, help him find himself, should help educate a person both within the framework of universal human values and within the framework of patriotism.”
Jacob Davey, a researcher into far-right hate at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London, highlighted that video games are great tool for regimes to spread their message to a “receptive audience”.
He said: “We know that hostile actors who are seeking to shape minds and influence people are opportunistic. They go where they think they might find a receptive audience, and they adopt a wide range of tech platforms to push their messaging out.”
Thompson Rivers University assistant professor Dr Joseph Brown added that he had see the impact of “constant propaganda” with his own eyes over five years of research.
He said: “They need to get everybody back on board with the war. It’s another piece of this whole puzzle of constant propaganda, all the time. In every single medium they can get to you with, they will get to you.”
