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The gaming world also moved due to the Ukrainian-Russian war and began to weigh heavily on the players there with severe sanctions.
On 25 February, something that I think many in my generation did not expect happened: war broke out in Europe. Russia has launched an attack on Ukraine and we do not know at the moment what the end of the story will be. Experts report on this on a daily basis about the impact that various economic sanctions could have on the Russian economy, but we prefer to take on the “resistance” in the gaming world.
There are now very few players in the gaming industry who have not reacted to what has happened at some level, and now we are taking a nice look at them. Let’s start with a positive piece of news. Building on the war theme, the developers of This War of Mine were the first to react to the events and immediately offered the proceeds of their game to the Ukrainian Red Cross. The players brought in 3 million zlotys, or 238 million forints, which is a very nice amount. Yesterday at the counter 3.732.250 visited the zloty, so there will be 4 million this week.
The Bloober Team was also among the first to make its games unavailable in Russia and Belarus. Thus, players will not be able to purchase new creations after The Medium and Layers of Fear. A similar sanction was imposed by the CD Project, so The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 withdrew from the Russian market. And Sony simply didn’t make Gran Turismo 7 available in the Russian section of the PS Store.
The ESL Pro League, the biggest participant in e-sports, has decided that Russian teams will no longer be allowed to compete. In addition, no events are held in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine.
Elctronic Arts has removed all Russian teams and national teams from FIFA 22 and NHL 22, respectively, and none can be obtained from EA’s surfaces anymore. They are also in talks with distributors in Russia to reclaim all EA games from the shelves.
Finally, Microsoft has announced that it will stop selling and supporting all of its products in Russian territories. This applies not only to games, but also to Windows updates, for example. We’re standing here right now, but it’s probably not over yet, as there are daily announcements and announcements from big companies around the world or even Hollywood, so there will definitely be sanctions in the gaming world as well.
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