Leading Finnish newspaper ‘Helsingin Sanomat’ has found an innovative way to bypass Russian censorship on the Russia-Ukraine war, and it comes in the form of a CSGO map.
The newspaper launched a custom CSGO map on World Press Freedom Day to provide accurate news reporting of the ongoing war and aims to distribute “independent journalism” to Russians.
The map, named ‘de_vonya’, represents a Slavic city that has been devastated by war. Once players venture inside the map, they’ll be able to find a secret room that showcases the horrors of the war in Ukraine that Russians will be able to view in their native language. The room includes uncensored footage and images of the cruelties witnessed by the reporters of Helsingin Sanomat during the war.
“Russians have very little chance to receive independent information about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” Helsingin Sanomat editor-in-chief Antero Mukka told GamesRadar+. “However, the gaming world and gamers themselves are still left unchecked. That’s why we decided to hide a newspaper inside the world’s most popular war game. We built a map of a Slavic city devastated by war, inside the game, with a secret room that offers Russian gamers uncensored access to the horrors of the war in Ukraine in their native language.”
At the time of writing, it doesn’t seem that Russia is aware about this map as the country hasn’t made any efforts to censor this from its citizens.
Players looking to check out ‘de_vonya’ for themselves can do so by checking out the workshop page of the map on Steam.
Thank you for taking the time to read our article. To stay up-to-date with the latest news and articles around Gaming and Esports, we kindly recommend following TalkEsport on Google News.
