Polish 11 Bit Studios donates $50 thousand for children treated at Okhmatdyt. This is a share of the profits from the Russian game INDIKA
The Polish company 11 Bit Studios, authors of such important and morally challenging games as This War of Mine and Frostpunk, which has been consistently supporting Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale war and adding Ukrainian localization to all its latest projects, is donating $50 thousand to treat children in the National Children’s Specialized Hospital Okhmatdyt, which was damaged during a Russian terrorist missile attack on July 8, 2024. But there is a nuance.
This money is a share of the revenue generated by the game INDIKA, created by the Russian studio Odd Meter, whose developers fled to Kazakhstan.
At one time, Ukrainian players criticized 11 Bit Studios for publishing INDIKA, even though it is essentially an anti-Russian game that ridicules Russian reality and shows the dark side of Russian Orthodoxy. But the game is set in Russia, and its authors were inspired by the works of Dostoevsky and Bulgakov.
On the one hand, $50,000 is a considerable amount, 2 million hryvnias, which is on par with and even more than many large Ukrainian companies have donated to restore Okhmatdyt. But it is still essentially Russian money. On the other hand, let there be at least some benefit from that INDIKA.
An ambiguous situation on par with the game Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, which we wrote about recently.
Did 11 Bit Studios do a good job or not? Or maybe they should have transferred their own money without mentioning the Russian game to avoid causing ambiguity. Write in the comments.
We would like to remind you that Ukrainian game studios also did not stand aside from the July 8 tragedy. GSC Game World (UAH 5 million), AB Games (UAH 2 million), and Room 8 Group (UAH 500 thousand) have already transferred money for the restoration of Okhmatdyt.
UPDATED. Wargaming transferred UAH 4 million to restore Okhmatdyt.