Pirates have Atomic Heart turned on – Kommersant FM – Kommersant

The Russian game Atomic Heart was advertised by pirates – links to all its distributions on the RuTracker.org torrent site automatically redirected users to the legal VK Play store. There, “Kommersant FM” was told that the platform has a special advertising program that allows sites to receive monetization for clicking on links to the game. Participation occurs through the contractor and at the initiative of the resource, in this case RuTracker.org.

RuTracker.org is the largest Russian language torrent site in the world. Roskomnadzor blocked it seven years ago. Despite this, the advertising campaign can be considered successful, Roman Maslennikov, director of the Explosive PR agency, noted: “In the short term, they can earn more than other games. The topic, I think, will be in the top for another month. Even older people have learned to deal with blocking, install VPNs, and so on. In addition, many users live abroad. And the information field in this case is Russian-speaking.

In addition, in times of import substitution, many things are closed, and Atomic Heart should not have any problems.

Nominally, piracy is frowned upon, but people’s demand cannot be met. Therefore, regulators look at all this through their fingers.

Atomic Heart is a shooter set in the atmosphere of an alternative Soviet Union. The action takes place in 1955, and by this point in the universe of the game, the country has already mastered robotics. Atomic Heart was released on February 21, 2023 and immediately topped the global sales rankings. The game is sold abroad on the Steam site, and VK Play is responsible for distribution in Russia.

Meanwhile, pirate platforms often become a tool for promoting legal products, said Kommersant FM columnist Mikhail Gurevich. True, according to him, as a rule, this happens unintentionally: “Illegal downloading of any products actually leads to an increase in the number of legal users. Because it is not convenient for everyone to configure all kinds of options that you must follow when using the unlicensed version.

There are various studies that since the beginning of hostilities between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, due to the disappearance of many licensed products from Russian sites, there has been a certain surge of interest in pirated services, precisely because it has become inconvenient to buy and use official sites. But the moment legal opportunities appear, people mostly return to their normal environment.

As a rule, at least 10% of the audience is always ready to overcome various kinds of inconvenience. The most active part illegally downloads the product and starts to inflame interest in it among other users, whether it be a game, a movie or something like that. And, accordingly, already the majority, which is not ready to bother once again, uses legal methods and is drawn into the game or watching the series.

Until the blocking, RuTracker.org actively cooperated with Russian copyright holders. The platform removed links to programs from Microsoft and 1C, TNT channel shows and films that are still in the box office.

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Ilya Sizov