The Ukrainian gaming community was outraged after the creators of the tactical cat game Mewgenics announced the addition of Russian localization. Previously, famous indie developer Edmund McMillen conducted a survey about which localizations players want to see, and Ukrainian was in the lead.
The Ukrainian gaming community was outraged after the creators of the tactical cat game Mewgenics announced the addition of Russian localization. Previously, famous indie developer Edmund McMillen conducted a survey about which localizations players want to see, and Ukrainian was in the lead.
On May 23, McMillen conducted a poll on Twitter to determine the priority language for future Mewgenics localizations. Ukrainian received 63,3% of the more than 24,000 votes, placing first among the four options. However, the developers later announced a Russian translation that was in the final stages of preparation, and invited Russian users to help adapt the character names.
«Dear fans, the Russian translation is in full swing, most of the texts are already ready and are being proofread. The development team and I are also actively working on font localization so that sending the cats on adventures would be even more beautiful. We hope to please you with the translation closer to the end of June. Thank you for your patience! Regarding the collection of names for the game: at the moment we have collected all possible names. The collection form is closed, thank you very much for your interest. Look for your pets in the official Russian version!», — the developers' message on Steam said.
Ukrainian gamers and bloggers criticized this move, pointing out the ignoring of the survey results and the support of the audience of the aggressor country during a full-scale war. McMillen himself responded to the criticism and the material of the GamedevDOU publication about this situation on X (Twitter).
«Today I woke up to this stupid article, as well as a bunch of comments from Ukrainians calling me a Russian dickhead in response to its misleading title… We conducted a survey a long time ago to compare wishlists and find out which languages we should localize the game into. Here are the results of that survey compared to the actual wishlist rankings by region…», the game’s author wrote .
He published statistics according to which Russia ranks second in the number of Mewgenics additions to the Steam wishlist, second only to the USA. Ukraine did not make it into the top eight countries.
Ukrainian players and specialized journalists criticized the developer’s arguments, emphasizing the unethical nature of cooperating with the market of a country waging a war of aggression.
«It’s really sad to read this. And what was the point of this survey anyway? And so, when a full-scale war is underway and the Russians are actively trying to destroy Ukraine, relying solely on wish lists seems simply inhumane,» Ukrainian game journalist Mykyta Kazimirov commented on the developer’s actions.
Due to outrage over Edmund McMillen’s position, Ukrainian players have already begun changing their reviews to negative ones and are trying to get their money back for purchasing the game.
Mewgenics is a tactical roguelike role-playing game set in 2026, developed by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Gliel. The gameplay focuses on breeding cats that take on the roles of different character classes and sending them on adventures based on a series of tactical battles that take place on procedurally generated playing fields.
Mewgenics was a commercial success, selling over a million copies in its first week.
