‘It shows they’re on the audience’s side’ Weeks after Duolingo deleted LGBT references in Russia, a popular romance game takes the opposite approach

On June 24, the creators of the popular mobile game Romance Club announced that they had removed the game from app stores in Russia. In their statement, the developers said the decision was a response to a demand from Russia’s federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, to remove all references to LGBTQ+ people from the game. Nonetheless, they said, they will continue to release Russian-language updates and to “support” their Russian-speaking players. Meduza explains what Romance Club is and why it drew the Russian authorities’ attention.

Romance Club was first released in 2018. The narrative-based game features dozens of distinct stories in which users play as protagonists (usually women) attempting to build romantic relationships with other characters. Romance Club is the second release from the Moldovan game studio Your Story Interactive.

The game currently offers more than 40 stories that players can choose from, with new ones being released regularly. Most of the stories are not interconnected and take place in different universes and different time periods. One takes place in the world of Dracula, for example, while another involves the kitsune, a mythical fox from Japanese folklore. The game has been downloaded more than 11 million times from Google Play alone.

In May 2024, Russian anti-LGBT activist Timur Bulatov reported Romance Club to the State Duma and Prosecutor General, demanding they block the app for containing “LGBT propaganda.” (Some of the game’s storylines allow their protagonists to pursue same-sex relationships.) Later that month, Roskomnadzor added the game’s App Store page to its registry of banned websites. The game’s Google Play listing also appeared on the blacklist, though both pages remained accessible to users. Roskomnadzor did not publicly provide a reason for the ban.

Russia’s ban on the ‘LGBT movement’

Russia has banned the so-called ‘international LGBT movement’ What does this mean for queer people and activists living there?

a year ago

14 cards

The game’s creators later confirmed on their official Telegram channel, however, that the ban was indeed due to the game’s content featuring LGBTQ+ people. The developers said it took them a long time to reach a decision about how to proceed; theoretically, they could have kept their game accessible in Russia by simply removing the LGBTQ+ storylines. Ultimately, though, they opted to fully remove Romance Club from app stores in Russia. “In the end, we came to the conclusion that the values of our company and the very essence of our stories, which promote diversity, inclusion, and the freedom to be oneself, make it impossible for us to delete this content,” the studio said.

At the same time, the developers stressed that they will not stop working on the game’s Russian-language version. They said they plan to continue releasing Russian-language updates and supporting their Russian-speaking players, though it’s unclear what this support will entail.

While users expressed disappointment at the game’s removal, many of the Telegram comments and X responses to the company’s announcement were supportive of the decision.

“Sorry, but I’m really happy that they chose ‘Western values’ and that they’ll keep releasing stories in Russian at the same time,” wrote one user. “It emphasizes that they’re on the side of their audience members, not on the side of politics.”

Other users contrasted the game developers’ decision with that of the language learning company Duolingo, which recently removed content that references LGBTQ+ people from its app to comply with Russian law and avoid being blocked.

“I’m trying to understand why Duolingo, which does not earn money from its Russian users, deleted LGBT content to stay out of [Roskomnadzor’s banned sites] registry, but Romance Club, [which earns revenue from in-app purchases], did not,” said one fan.