Good stuff.

@soviet666: he told you look of a standard gamer: a pirate who plays pc games.

Good luck out there duder, hopefully Putin backs down for one reason or another soon. Stay safe.

Great article, Patrick! Nice to read about an experience with gaming so different from my own.

I love that stuff like this gets put on the site, especially since it concerns a user/world issue. Gaining perspective is a thing people shouldn't take for granted.

@sweep: That video is from VICE News, a newer division that is its own entity within VICE. I would say there is very little sensationalism coming from them as opposed to stuff coming from VICE itself. Take for example the "Russian Roulette" series by Simon Ostrovsky: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw613M86o5o7DfgzuUCd_PVwbOCDO472B

Not that I don't agree that stuff coming from VICE is often sensationalized, but I feel that the disdain is somewhat misplaced in this case :)

Fascinating read, thanks Patrick and SnakeVS!

Most of the issues surrounding Ukraine are in the southeastern Crimea region, not in Kiev.

And while I know that Dota Fever hasn't spread too far beyond Brad in the GB offices, one of the three or so top teams in that game's eSports scene is based out of (3/5th) from Ukraine. Someone asked Dendi at the Free To Play premiere in SF about current events, and he gave a sarcastic response followed by a straight-faced explanation that things aren't day to day different for him.

In fact, the Star Ladder tournament just held it's finals in Kiev last week.

What a cool duder. Labor Law, huh? Right on.

Keep your head down, and keep making the world a better place.

Good article, Scoops.

It's amazing to hear how similar Roman's gaming history is similar to what I went through as a kid growing up in Serbia (former Yugoslavia). Only I had an Atari 2600 clone in the early 90s called the Rambo TV Game which had some 100-200 games built into it and I remember most of them being bad.

The piracy situation in Serbia is also similar to Ukraine (probably like most eastern european countries). The first time I saw a licensed game was when I was 16 in 2001 and that was in France. You just had no choice but get pirated stuff and most of the people still don't understand why they should pay for software, especially when a new release costs 80e (110$).

Concerning the political situation, just understand that whoever comes to power won't change anything. We had a revolution in 2000, brought pro-west "democratic" people to power and 14 years later everything is still fucked up. Neither of the sides fighting for Ukraine is there to help its people.

@patrickklepek hey I'm Ukrainian too and I just wanted to say that this was really cool of you to publish. Respect.

Hopefully this turns into an international series where Patrick interviews gamers from all across the world!

I'm really interested to see what it's like to game in China.

@humanity: That is a brilliant idea.

Well let's just say I watched Vinny's panel on how to be a successful producer!

Nice to get some inside perspective on the issues in Ukraine. Wish you the best, stay safe duder!

Hello from a fellow citizen of Easter Europe! Here's to Ukraine emerging from all this as an independent and strong country.

Kudos for reminding me of Dendy. This thing was my biggest aspiration as a kid.

Надеюсь, что козляцкое российское правительство еще получит своё.

Interesting. Thanks for giving us a heads-up, duder. I'm terrible at keeping up with politics and such, but in this case I like to just read your story and how all of this affects your everyday life.

Nothing "fancy", just real and to the point. And I found some of that in this case.

And the main brand recognizable by all is stalker. A game that I still haven't gotten seriously into, but respect on the basis that this is a game(s) made around something the developers cared about. That shines through to me.

That was really interesting, thanks a lot Patrick!

An odd progression of questions, but interesting nonetheless. Though perhaps Patrick merely sent him a series of questions and this wasn't actually a one on one conversation. I think a lot of people only see this war from what happened in the last couple months. The complexities of this war and the civil war Ukranians waged already to get us to the point where we are now isn't properly spotlighted in the media. Unfortunately for the person being interviewed, this is unlikely to end soon. Though at least he doesn't live in the Eastern part.

Great interview. Much more interesting to read this story rather than yet another MS/Sony flaming speculative article. :)

I am a hardcore gamer and I live in Ukraine, and I can agree with what this guy says, I buy most of my ps3 and ps4 games from psn store, and it is hard to buy games here because when it is released in Europe, it takes up to a month later before we can get it in ukraine, but from psn store I get it immiediately. Also all I wish is to have where I can get the boxes of games I mean the ones that include collections, but I cant find that here. ( lviving in ukraine for 5 years now)