No Rest for the Wicked developers are upset that the game is not sold in Russia

Today, the new action/RPG from Moon Studios – No Rest for the Wicked – will be released in Early Access. Ahead of it, one of the users on Steam, probably from Russia, created a discussion thread for No Rest for the Wicked, where he addressed the game’s developers with the claim that they chose the wrong publisher, as Private Division does not publish games in Russia.

Naturally, the comments under this topic sparked a debate in which many other users took part, but the most interesting was the response from the user thomasmahler:

“Folks, what the hell?

All of you are players, I’d want every single one of you to be able to play No Rest for the Wicked.

Also, what in the world does my scarf have to do with anything? lol

We have people from all places in the world working for Moon – Ukrainians, Russians, Israelis,… you name it. And I’m pretty proud of the fact that we have such a multicultural group of insanely talented folks all working together on a greater goal.

I do not care about politics and never have. We’re here to make great games that make people happy and that’s about it.

If for some reason you can’t buy Wicked, let me know and I’ll see what we can do.”

The person with the nickname thomasmahler is not just another Steam user or a random studio employee. This is Thomas Mahler, the CEO of Moon Studios, who sees no problem with No Rest for the Wicked being sold in Russia and is even ready to help solve these problems.

Later, in response to a question about whether he didn’t care that Russian soldiers were killing Ukrainians, Thomas replied:

“Simply put: We’re also just entertainers. We’re not the ones you should listen to to form your own political views and I’d say asking game developers on where they stand on this stuff is not the wisest thing to do.

I’m against any kind of war, but I’m not in any position to do anything about what’s happening in Europe. When the war in Ukraine broke out, I offered any of our Ukrainians in our studio to move to my house in Vienna so that they’d be safe. I offered our Russian folks the same thing. And I also did that when Hamas attacked Israel for our Israelis. I’m always for compassion and as humans we should always help each other, not fight one another.

If this attitude makes you not buy No Rest for the Wicked, I’m sorry to hear that, but again, I don’t think we should politicize everything. We make games to entertain people, to make them happy, to make them cry… to make them feel something. That’s what we do. We do not have any other hidden agendas.”