The GOG Newsletter Incident: Statement from the Creators

Today we have a difficult topic to discuss. Unfortunately, due to a major mistake GOG.com made in their newsletter—which was completely out of our control —we need to explain and clarify the situation.

Please, this topic is too important to just read the headlines. If you decide to comment or ask questions, please read the whole statement.

What Happened? Symbols associated with Nazi ideology appeared in a GOG newsletter featuring The End of the Sun.

Yesterday (June 5th, 2026), GOG.com sent a newsletter to millions of players featuring a discount code for our game. In it, GOG used a double "S" mark, a symbol widely associated with Nazi ideology (that could be prohibited in many countries). This was a huge mistake by GOG, and we had absolutely no part in or control over it. HERE IS how PC GAMER covers the topic: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/gog-apologizes-for-emailing-nazi-runes-to-its-followers/

We were completely shocked at first

We were on holiday, but when we saw what was happening on the GOG subreddit, we immediately reacted with a statement there. Fortunately, most people understand the situation and realize this was GOG's mistake, not ours. Still, we decided to publish our full statement and explanation, as we do not want to be associated with Nazism in any way, nor do we want Slavic culture to be tied to this topic.

We want to underline that we are aware that the "Sowilo" rune, when used as a separate sign, has been well known for centuries as a positive symbol. Unfortunately, GOG used it twice, which caused this whole situation. GOG has already apologized and made a statement. We write more about this at the end of this post.

1. FIRST OF ALL - WE HAVE ZERO INSPIRATION FROM OR CONNECTIONS TO NEO-NAZIS (We never thought we would need to say these words in our lives)

To be honest, for a long time we didn't even realize there could be an issue with this when making a fantasy game about Slavic culture. We just wanted to promote amazing stories, Slavic fairy tales, deep human relationships, and cool detective stories.

As many of you probably know, we are a couple from Poland. (Our YouTube) We have a passion for making games and storytelling. We are sharing our YouTube channel because we think it is important in this situation for you to see our creative work and get to know us better.

We want to underline that neither we nor our game have any connections to neo-Nazis or the Nazi community. This is a fantasy game set in a Slavic universe.

2. WHY WE DECIDED TO CHANGE THE KOLOVRAT SYMBOL IN OUR GAME LOGO AFTER RELEASE (A YEAR AGO)

Yes, we used the "kolovrat" symbol in the game, but we treated it as a symbol of the "God of the Sun" or simply the "Sun". In the game, we even acknowledge as a trivia fact that some ancient symbols were co-opted by the Nazis, but we never used the Nazi swastika or the double "S" symbol. Our Kolovrat symbol was based on historical sources of ancient statues: LINK TO BOSTON MUSEUM STATUE (Yes, we are now aware these were Greek statues, but overall it is a historically confirmed sun symbol, and this is what we looked for. The sun is very important to our game's storytelling, and if you play the game from start to finish, you will definitely understand why).

Steam post image As you can see, these are the symbols from our first logo that we were inspired by. These are images from the BOSTON MUSEUM, where you can check that they are dated to 720–700 B.C. We simply thought that such an old sun symbol wouldn't have bad connotations.

It turned out otherwise... Some reviewers (especially in Russia and Germany) did not want to review our game because of the kolovrat in the logo, and that is when we first realized there was a problem. Unfortunately, so many Slavic (and Norse) symbols have been co-opted by neo-Nazis that, during production, we overlooked the fact that the kolovrat is also used by certain neo-Nazi groups. We are firmly opposed to any Nazi ideology, and our game reflects that.

Because of a small design decision made many years ago, marketing became much harder. Since the game represents 8 years of hard work, this was very painful for us. A year ago, we therefore decided to change the kolovrat symbol in our logo to a "rosette", which is also a sun symbol but lacks the negative connotations we were previously unaware of. We didn't do this right after the game's release simply because the game wasn't selling as well as we had expected at the time, and we had to focus on promoting the game to have funds to live on.

How GOG ended up using the old logo in their newsletter – we don't know. They probably used old assets from their drives.

This is what our previous logo looked like:

About a year ago, we changed the symbol in our logo to a different one (a rosette), which doesn't have any negative connotations:

The worst part was that no one ever mentioned this to us before the game's release (keep in mind the game had a "coming soon" page on Steam featuring the older logo for 7 years). Ultimately, we changed all our logos (trust us, doing this across so many platforms and reviews was very difficult) and decided to open a new chapter. You can read about it here. We spent months trying to unravel everything and explain it thoroughly to make our stance completely clear:

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In the PC version of the game itself, the logo is currently waiting for an update (it is already updated on the PS5 version). The game is about Slavic culture. At its core, the game is a medieval thriller and a love story. When you play it or read the reviews, you will see it is a thriller/detective game on the surface, but underneath lies a deep story about family and human fate, having absolutely nothing to do with the ideology we might have been associated with due to this unfortunate newsletter.

3. GOG'S HUGE MISTAKE: USING DOUBLE "S" SYMBOLS AND OUR OLD LOGO IN THEIR NEWSLETTER

Truly, we were just as shocked when we saw the double "S" symbols next to the newsletter title, alongside our game's old logo.

First of all, we do not use any SS symbols or"the Nazi swastika"in the game. At one point in the game, we explain that the swastika was an ancient symbol (still used today in India, for example) that was later adapted by the Nazis, but we were completely certain we did not want to use those specific symbols in our game. In the newsletter, GOG placed the SS symbol next to the phrase "Slavic adventure", which makes things even worse. GOG also mistakenly used our old logo. We want to emphasize that as developers, we have absolutely no control over how GOG's newsletters look. We assume someone at GOG simply wanted to add some "cool" looking Slavic symbols without beforehand checking what those symbols mean in modern culture. Unfortunately, these mistakes created a horrible impression, linking both our game and Slavic culture as a whole to a terrifying ideology. Even though we had no part in creating this newsletter, we are extremely sorry for this misunderstanding, as we feel a sense of responsibility for how Slavic culture is promoted after dedicating the last few years to it.

However, please do not send hate toward GOG. There are amazing people working there, and people make mistakes. We understand that without proper historical and political research, human errors like this can happen. GOG has already apologized on their social media, and we are sure they will send a follow-up newsletter with a thorough clarification and explanation.

We hope that, at the very least, this situation will make people more aware of the history and modern meanings of these symbols.

GOG Statement on X: https://x.com/GOGcom/status/2062981104362242551

If you have any questions, we are open to talking in the discussion section!

Best Regards,

Kinga and Kuba, creators of The End of the Sun