The Miracle of the Dnieper. It Could Have Ended Up A Disaster – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Rip-Off Promoted With... Putin

The concept of the ever-changing Zone seemed extremely difficult to execute. However, this did not bother West Games, as the team was never to eager to fulfill its promises.

Moreover, the Ukrainians seemed to have a knack for making enemies rather easily. Even the players who were the most enthusiastic about the project quickly realized that they spent their money prematurely: the developers didn't treat their promise to release daily updates seriously, and once they finally appeared, they didn't contain any specific information on the development of Areal, focusing instead on the controversy surrounding the production. There were no new materials: from time to time conceptual artwork was published, which was rather strange for a game that was allegedly in the alpha phase already at the beginning of the campaign. Meanwhile, a sizeable mess began to accumulate on the fundraiser's webpage. In the comments section, accusations of fraud intertwined with the statements of Russian users who, due to the tense situation in Ukraine, decided to make it harder for West Games to run their Kickstarter campaign. Yavorsky pointed out that this was the first time he experienced troll activity, being more accustomed to DDoS attacks. Eugene Kim described it as a massive operation: "The Russians have found a way to control and manipulate the public, urging foreign journalists to write things that were useful for them. Our game is a perfect example of this kind of actions." One would think that in order to stop the stream of hatred on the part of the Russian trolls, the studio would have to receive a blessing from Vladimir Putin himself. Which it soon did.

Mutations, anomalies and a mysterious substance from space – nothing in Areal was as unreal as the creators' promises.

The situation in West Games was taking a turn for the worse day by day – instead of providing information about the game, the developers had to focus on refuting successive complaints, and the atmosphere of suspicion which had surrounded the project brought a halt to the inflow of donations – when virtually overnight Areal became the center of attention of a completely different kind. On 19th July a post appeared on the Kickstarter website of the campaign, entitled "Yesterday we received a strange letter..." According to the developers, none other than Vladimir Putin wrote to Eugene Kim. The President of the Russian Federation had supposedly learned about the project by West Games from his daughter and decided to express his support: "It is important that our people shoot at each other in games like this instead of the real world." Moreover, Putin allegedly declared himself a fan of shooters and invited the Ukrainians to the Kremlin to present the alpha version of the production. Of course, it is difficult to trust the authenticity of the letter. Would the leader of Russia really find time to look into Ukrainian games in the midst of the political turmoil in Eastern Europe? It was therefore probably the work of a talented troll... or the developers themselves who thus managed to capture the public’s attention once again. The letter incident occurred 4 days before the end of the fundraiser when West Games was still over USD 10,000 behind, and there was nothing to indicate that the Ukrainians would succeed in reaching their goal. And it probably wouldn't have happened if it hadn’t been for the fact that the letter from Vladimir Putin was only the first item in the list of the miracles of the Dnieper.