The promising Ukrainian role-playing game New Arc Line has finally been announced… but there’s a problem
The promising steampunk role-playing game New Arc Line from Kyiv-based Dreamate, which we’ve been following for a while now, has finally been announced.
Dreamate has released a full trailer for its spiritual descendant Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura and Dragon Age: Origins, and announced the platforms, preliminary release date, and project partners.
New Arc Line will be released on Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S sometime in 2024. From the very beginning, the game will have Ukrainian language and voice acting.
Unfortunately, things are not well with the partner. The game was published by Fulqrum Publishing, a new entity of Russia’s 1C Entertainment, which since February 25, 2022 (yes) belongs to the Chinese holding Tencent.
You can say anything you want about the fact that the asset sale agreement was prepared long before the full-scale invasion began, that Fulqrum Publishing is now located in Prague, not Moscow, that Czechs and even Ukrainians work there in addition to Russians. But… this is the former 1C, which until 2022 paid taxes and had offices in Russia, so it has been sponsoring the murder of Ukrainians since 2014. Moreover, in our opinion, 1C has been working as a mouthpiece for Russian revanchism since the late 1990s, and has done much to form a total support for the war in the minds of the younger generation of Russians.
If Ukrainian developers are satisfied with cooperation with such partners, it is their business. But we will most likely ignore this project, no matter how promising it looks. It’s a pity that in the 9th year of the war, Ukrainians still see no problems in cooperating with “former” Russians.