It is slightly disturbing to get games out of an ongoing war to be honest... But we live in disturbing times anyways
I never fully got this. We got movies and books from recent conflicts, no? And I don't want to jump to the discussion between gaming and movie media and how different they are (you know movies CAN BE ART and gAMEZ CANNOT!).
You can make a shit movie that everyone will bash due to its immaturity and lack of knowledge of what the conflict is really about/missing the point/only scratching surface/misinterpretation blablabla (the examples in cinema department are a plenty). Thing is, you also have a good ones. With games it should be the same, but the proportions are reversed. Good and successful games that try to touch and handle "disturbing" or controversial topics in a more mature way, are rarity or non-existent.
There are some games that wants to tell you the story and reflect on the subject rather than kill as many enemies as possible. You can have games like "This War of Mine" that approach the subject in more mature way. And the background for the game is relatively recent conflict from Balkan wars in the 90ties. I haven't played the game, but I also haven't noticed "disturbing" reception of it in the press. I guess, it is not much about the subject of recent conflict being taboo (witnesses of Balkan war atrocities are still alive and I am pretty sure that your average-Joe Serb will have different opinion about the conflict than your average-Joe Croat or Bosnian), but how it is handled.
I suppose what you mean by "disturbing" is that for the very recent conflicts, it is the media narration that fortify your stance on the conflict, and of course, media narration will be different depending where you live and receive the broadcast. Any narrative that clashes with this stance is perceived as "disturbing".
It is like if you show "9th Company" Russian movie to some Afghan war veteran only to find out he is a fan of "Rambo 3"
.
Now, with RTS it (can) be interesting because you can have two side of conflict described in two separate campaigns in a more like "documentary and historical" style, where you are put in the position of one or the other side of the conflict and have to go from that. But of course it will be biased depending who made it and which subjective "truth" was used as an "objective truth".
But that's the same for any movies/books/other media outlets and whatnot that discuss the recent conflicts. Why to feel "disturbed" about RTS games?
EDIT:::
I still remember "
Six Says in Fallujah" game that never got released due to "disturbing" content. In the end, I doubt it was the real reason as they could have just rename it to "Twelve Days: Hallelujah - Middle East Warfare" and be done with political-correctness.