What frustrates me about that is Pathologic is a really dark, gritty, sometimes miserable experience. It fits the “hard” Russian worldview very well. Additionally, it’s well regarded as an extremely artistic game, really pushing boundaries in what kinds of experiences we put into gaming in general. “Does a game have to be ‘fun’ to be ‘good’?” is Pathologic in a nutshell. You could make an argument for it being high art.
This much respect and admiration should be a cultural victory for Russia. They should’ve given those guys medals and put them up in a fancy studio so they could make the project as good as possible, to bring respect and accomplishment to Russia.
Instead they probably got drafted, shipped to the front, and got a grenade dropped on their heads from a quadcopter…