The popular shooter Counter-Strike has millions of users around the world, including in Russia. Now Finland’s largest newspaper has used the game to bring news of the war in Ukraine to Russian youth.
Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter where players play in two teams. A team of terrorists and a team of soldiers will stop the terrorists and release the hostages.
The goal is to stop the other team. Shoot the enemy and avoid getting killed.
The game takes place on different maps or boards, which are either designed by the game developers, or by the players themselves.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, the newspaper even designed a map where there is a hidden room, where players can read news about the war in Ukraine.
The game is very popular in Russia, where there are around four million users of the game, according to the Finnish newspaper.
Most of them are young Russians.
– Banned in Russia
Since Russia began invading Ukraine, the Russian authorities have banned social media, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. In addition to blocking access to many Western news sites like other sites Helsingin Sanomat.
Using the game, the newspaper wants to avoid censorship by the Russian authorities and pass on important information about the war to Russian youth, who otherwise would not have had access to it.
– While Helsingin Sanomat and other independent foreign media have been banned in Russia, online gambling has not yet been banned.
This is what Antero Moca, editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat, told the news agency France Press agency.
The newspaper’s new venture was launched in conjunction with Press Freedom Day on 3 May.
– To celebrate freedom of the press, we’ve now built a Slavic city in the game, called Voina, which means war in Russian, says Mocha.
Information about massacres
In the basement of a block in the map designed by the newspaper, there is a hidden room. When the player’s avatar dies, the room appears. There, players can read information about the 2022 Potsja massacre on the big screen.
A Russian voice can be heard over the loudspeakers telling us what we see in the pictures and the killing of Ukrainian civilians.
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In addition, a map of Russian attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine appears.
On the table is a poster with the number of Russians killed in the war. 70,000, the newspaper wrote.
– This is information that is not available from Russian government propaganda sources, Muca tells AFP.
The right to know
Since the map’s launch on Monday, it has been downloaded more than 2,000 times, the news agency reported.
But the newspaper cannot currently track the geographical location of those using the map.
The editor believes that the initiative can reach a critical age target group in Russia.
– He says that these people can often be of mobilization age.
– I believe that Russians also have the right to know independent and fact-based information, so that they can also make their life decisions, – says the editor.
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