Finnish newspaper Helsinin Sanomat has created a custom Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) map explicitly designed to circumvent Russian news censorship and pass information about the war in Ukraine to Russian players.

Beginning in March 2022, following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia began blocking international media to put in place tighter controls on news reaching the Russian public regarding the ongoing war.

CS:GO is one of the most popular first-person shooter games in the world, being the most played game on steam. CS:GO is especially popular with Russian gamers, who would make up roughly a tenth of the title’s total playerbase.

It has also eluded the Russian censorship machine so far, allowing users in the country to connect to CS:GO servers and enjoy their matches without limitation.

As first reported by Gamer on PCa custom CS:GO map named ‘de_voyna‘ resembles the ruins of a Slavic city with a secret underground bunker that players can visit to access information about the war in Ukraine.

“On the surface, it looks like a normal Slavic city. However, there might be something hidden underneath,” reads the game’s map description.

The underground room presents a selection of key data on the war in English and Russian. This information includes statistics on Russian military deaths from reliable sources, details of missile strikes and other atrocities committed on civilians, images and location of the incidents.

“The goal is to make Russians see that the terrors of war are happening in places that seem very familiar to them,” the newspaper explains on a dedicated page on the launch of the special CS:GO map.

The bunker is also accessible and made more apparent when the player dies on the “de_voyna” map, as the secret room is highlighted in “steal” mode and is hard to miss for those unaware of its existence.

The card was released on May 3, 2023, coinciding with World Press Freedom Day, and it has just started to gain traction, with over 10,000 followers. But, unfortunately, the more popular it becomes, the more likely Russian authorities will ban CS:GO.

Those interested in downloading’de_voyna‘ on their CS:GO install can do this either through the “Workshop Maps” section in-game or through the Steam desktop or web app.

Helsinin Sanomat urges players from Western countries to play on the map and try to get Russian players to play there as well, which fulfills the main purpose of its existence.

Last year, a similar project to “smuggle” information about the war in Ukraine to the Russians used torrents of movies and games to do so.

Named “torrents of truth“, the initiative planted videos and text in an archive of pirated content that shared information on how to use VPNs to maintain the anonymity of Russian ISPs and a list of reliable sources of information.