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Олександр КузьменкоGameDev Eng
14 November 2025, 13:53
2025-11-14
“Ukraine should be treated the same as other regions”. A physicist from Sumy told how he helped the developers of Europa Universalis V add the correct Ukrainian names to the game
Dmytro Mulin, a physicist from Sumy who has lived in the Czech Republic for 15 years, was one of the players who helped developers from Paradox add the correct toponyms to the historical strategy game Europa Universalis V. According to him, they were 80% correct from the start, but in some places there were Russified or Soviet names.
Dmytro Mulin, a physicist from Sumy who has lived in the Czech Republic for 15 years, was one of the players who helped developers from Paradox add the correct toponyms to the historical strategy game Europa Universalis V. According to him, they were 80% correct from the start, but in some places there were Russified or Soviet names.
«I discovered Europa Universalis for myself somewhere in 2018. That is, I didn’t catch either the second or third part, and I didn’t even start playing the fourth from the very beginning — somewhere a year or two before the pandemic. I accidentally came across it, tried it, and I really liked it», Dmitry said in an interview with Gamedev DOU.
According to Dmytro, approximately 80% of the toponyms in Europa Universalis V were completely correct from the very beginning. There were about 200–300 Ukrainian locations in the game, most of which had correct names.
«However, there were certain problems. For example, some of the names in western Ukraine were with Polish transliteration, in the south — in Russian, and elsewhere instead of the name of the city there was the name of the street. For example, Oster was marked as Starohorodske», the physicist noted.
He explained that there are over 30,000 locations in the game in total, and the developers were probably using some kind of database that might have old or outdated names. This caused some inaccuracies, such as Uniniez being listed instead of Nizhyn, an ancient name dating back to pre-Mongol times.
«At the same time, there were also completely Soviet or late names, such as Kominternivske in the Odessa region or Krasnograd. And there could be old toponyms nearby, for example Zdvyzhen — also from the pre-Mongol period. That is, everything was a bit mixed up: Polish, Russian, German transliterations, communist names — literally a few of each type,» said Dmytro.
He noted that the developers themselves wanted to make improvements before the release, so they worked with the community and collected feedback. Dmytro says that he was one of the most active Ukrainian users on the forums, but not the only one who suggested fixes, and it was «a kind of teamwork with the support of other participants.»
«In general, we had to understand when exactly to write so that it didn’t look like spam, and prepare high-quality, well-reasoned materials: show old maps, explain why certain names are incorrect. The main argument was not that we have a war and everything should be Ukrainian, but that Ukraine should be treated the same as other regions,» Dmytro noted.
He explained that Czech cities in the game have Czech transliteration (not Prague, but Praha), and Polish ones have Polish. The developers from Paradox explained that they used a principle they called Wikipedia Standard. They opened the English-language Wikipedia and looked at how the name of the city was listed there, for example Bila Tserkva, not Belaya Tserkov.
«So in this sense, the developers, consciously or not, actually took our side. Although, of course, there were users who didn’t like it, and we had to defend our position with arguments,» the physicist noted.
Dmytro added that he does not pay attention to such modifications as «Revert Kyiv to Kiev».
Previously, Ukrainian IT veteran Vitaliy, who joined the Defense Forces and is currently serving in the Marine Corps in the Unmanned Systems Battalion, created the website «Game Haven.» It promotes Ukrainian localization and provides a personalized report on the user’s game library.
Kyiv Not Kiev. The Russians are fed up with the names of Ukrainian cities in Europa Universalis V and have released a mod that replaces them with Russified versions
«Helped clean Russian games from the library.» Military created a website that promotes Ukrainian localization in games and warns about Russian projects
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