Players with Russian IP addresses are reportedly unable to access a CSGO map that has a secret area full of unedited material regarding the invasion of Ukraine since Valve has supposedly barred access to it. The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat created the map known as “de_voyna,” which is adorned in part with pictures, news articles, and videos depicting Russian military operations in Ukraine. The FPS game map’s goal is to get around Russian news restrictions and give CS:GO players in Russia unfiltered information about the conflict. Helsingin Sanomat, however, now claims that Russian players’ access to de_voyna has been restricted by Valve.
Resembling a war-torn, Eastern Europen city, de_voyna takes advantage of CSGO’s free-roaming spectator camera, allowing players who have been eliminated from the current round to clip through walls and locate a secret room, which contains information and reports on Russian actions in Ukraine. You can see more of de_voyna here.
As news and media are censored in Russia, Helsingin Sanomat designed de_voyna to provide Russian CSGO players with unedited information about the invasion of Ukraine. However, the newspaper now alleges that Valve has specifically blocked the map for players with Russian IP addresses.
“Censoring a single custom map from Russia or any other country is probably impossible, because it would be impossible to target the censorship so precisely,” Helsingin Sanomat claims.
“If the Russian authorities wanted to prevent the spread of the map, they would probably have to block players from accessing the entire Steam service through which Valve’s games are played. Thus, it is obvious that the blocking has been done on the end of the game service provider Valve in the United States.”
PCGamesN has contacted both Valve and Helsingin Sanomat for comment and will update this story with any further information.
In the meantime, get the latest on the Counter-Strike 2 release date and check out the Counter-Strike 2 system requirements that we expect to be announced by Valve.
