Ukrainian Warfare: Gostomel Heroes

There is a game on Steam called Ukrainian Warfare: Gostomel Heroes. It is developed by Cats Who Play, a studio based in Moscow, Russia. The game covers the Battle of Gostomel Airport from the perspective of the Russian side in the conflict and frames the assault as heroic. This game has already been blocked in Ukraine and Germany, and it’s due to be released on March 24th 2026.

For context, Gostomel is on the outskirts of Kyiv. It’s the gateway to Bucha, a town that became internationally recognised in April 2022 when retreating Russian forces left behind evidence of mass civilian killings. The conflict depicted in this game isn’t historical. People are still dying, on both sides, now.

When I saw Ukrainian Warfare: Gostomel Heroes, my first instinct was straightforward. This is propaganda published by a studio in the aggressor nation, romanticising a military operation carried out in a place the world now associates with documented atrocities. It should not exist. Take it down.

But then I sat with that instinct for a while and something more disturbing came to mind. My moral position became less comfortable.

Strategy gaming has always had a complicated relationship with real conflict. Some developers bring direct, lived experiences to it. TriArts Games, who we interviewed on the podcast, are working on Defcon Zero. This is a science-fiction RTS in development in Israel, and the team at TriArts have spoken about how operating through active conflict shapes their design instincts around urgency, pressure, and consequences. Yet they resolved to keep politics out of their work. Development is informed by experience, it is not driven by ideology.

I have spent decades playing games that simulate wars, invasions, and atrocities. With strategy games you are removed from the conflict to such a degree that they can feel like puzzles. Command and Conquer Generals depicted a fictionalised Middle East conflict torn apart by terrorism and US military intervention. I wrote recently about how accurately it represents modern geopolitics, the point being that a game rated 12+ in 2003 understood Great Power competition and rivalry better than most of the people living through it. At the time Generals was released, it was accused of being provocative. We played it without a second thought. For the people who lived through the events it was drawing from, that wasn’t the case. The game did not ask permission. It did not consider the perspective of people living through Middle East conflict. It just existed (it was great!), and we played it.

Cats Who Play are not a fringe outfit. They are a legitimate videogame developer with a track record. They were originally attached to Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance before purportedly parting ways with publisher Slitherine in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Dark Fate now lists Slitherine as both developer and publisher, yet there are some who allege Cats Who Play remained attached to the project. This cannot be verified. They developed the Syrian Warfare series which depicts the Syrian Civil War with similar claims of realism and authenticity. That conflict was, and remains, devastating for all those who suffered through it. They are a functioning, relatively successful developer operating in the tradition of Eastern European military RTS games that treat modern conflict as subject and setting without much apparent concern for the political consequences of that choice.

Which brings me to the question I keep returning to: is this art? And if it is art, does that protect it?

Art is supposed to make us uncomfortable. It is intended to go places that polite conversation will not. Some of history’s most important creative works have depicted atrocities, real suffering, real war and have done so from perspectives that were contested or outright wrong. We do not generally think the answer is to censure them. Instead, we think that the answer is criticism, context, and the judgement of the audience.

Games can engage with modern warfare seriously and produce something valuable. Drone Perspective, which I wrote about in 2024, does exactly that. It puts you in the role of a remote drone operator and uses the comfort and efficiency of that experience to make you feel uneasy about it. It doesn’t preach. It doesn’t take sides. It just lets you notice what you are doing. Drone Perspective interrogates the nature of modern warfare, including the kind of drone warfare that has defined the conflict in Ukraine. The discomfort it generates is the point. Ukrainian Warfare: Gostomel Heroes does not appear to be interested in that kind of discomfort.

The Second World War is the most heavily gamified conflict in human history. Eighty years on, it still fills entire subgenres and games are still being made about it today. Yet nobody is releasing a game that frames the perpetrators of Auschwitz as heroes. That is a line you do not cross. Some subjects do not become acceptable to romanticise just because the calendar moved on. If we apply that standard to an event from eighty years ago, it’s worth asking how Ukrainian Warfare, the videogame, becomes acceptable with three years and an active body count.

The question which has bothered me the most is one that reflects as much on those outraged by this title as it does on the developer. Syrian Warfare sold quietly, drew a small amount of criticism in wargaming circles, and was debated briefly before we moved on. It didn’t generate this level of hostility. And yet, the studio is the same, the framing is similar. The suffering depicted in Syrian Warfare is real and ongoing. Why the difference in response?

Consider the way Ukrainian refugees were received into Western and Central Europe in 2022 compared to Syrian refugees. The Ukrainian refugees looked like us and lived like us. Is this why they were welcomed when, in recent history, refugees of other nationalities were shunned by society? Wherever that instinct came from it shaped humanitarian policy across the continent. It’s worth asking if it also shapes what we consider worthy of moral outrage in entertainment. It’s not a comfortable question and it’s not intended to be.

I’m not saying this game should be banned. I will say that it made me uncomfortable and that I believe that discomfort is legitimate. The question of where games sit in relation to the conflicts they depict is not one the RTS community has seriously entertained. Perhaps it is time that we did.