Video game world starts moving to cut off Russia

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/04/video-game-firms-move-to-cut-off-russia-amid-ukraine-war.html

Not sure how relevant this is or how affective, but I figured it might be of some interest to this forum.

[Moderator Note: While we do appreciate that our communities have an interest in this topic, these forums are not an appropriate location for the discussion. Thank you for understanding.]

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Since this is about games in general, it belongs here:

It seems quite difficult to prevent people from accessing digital stuff on the internet, based on where they live.

Which of course doesnt mean it wont work do give it a try. Not everyone will go through the hoops to circumvent a ban.

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You definitely can’t prevent them from accessing things they already own, but you definitely can make it a pain in the butt for them to make any future purchases and get new stuff legally. Which already happened when they got kicked from swift. They can’t buy or subscribe to games digitally anymore. They could access services like Steam and such using a VPN which would let them keep playing stuff they already own, but for any new titles they’ll have to resort to piracy (which they’re really good at, to be honest).

Other forms of digital content like video streaming services (netflix, amazon, hbo, etc) are already a no go, and they can’t pay for their subscriptions, so again, piracy becomes their only resource for that too.

Even cryptocurrencies are making some effort to block them out, although I’m not sure how effective that is.

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Not that I have tried, but afaik Netflix etc. are very easy to circumvent with a VPN.

Which is useless if you can’t actually pay for it. Or even afford it, which is soon gonna be the case considering their economy is crashing like a meteor.

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I assume you already know that we do not ‘own’ our Acti-Blizzard games.

If you read the EULA or ToS you will find we ‘rent’ these games we play.

At any time, for any reason Blizzard can take away our ability to play them.

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I wasn’t talking about bl*zzard, and it’s a figure of expression.

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With all this extra free time created because they can’t play video games anymore, how many young russians will now join the military?

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The ad campaign practically writes itself :rofl:
Can’t play CoD anymore? We got the next thing! Roguelike, photorealistic, and thrilling realistic scenarios such as Get stuck for weeks in a convoy.

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Ask yourself the same question though.

If the hostile and terrible military actions of your Govt caused you to lose access to entertainment would you run to join that military? The one that is part of the reason you can’t play a game you want? How many really play games to satisfy a desire to be in the military and now they have time, they can go achieve that dream? Would you volunteer to invade your neighboring country, for no valid reason, because you can’t game?

I mean, maybe a few would. But I have some serious doubts that most people are sitting around playing games when what they really want is military service. If they were interested, qualified, and capable, they would already be there.

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I would have to agree.

But I would have to also say there is a good probability of players wanting to experience the real thing, without knowing what its really like. And probably getting a rude awakening really quick when they make that choice.

Get your dumb politics off these forums.

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Yes, and the really frightening thing is rather that many people simply accept the opinion of the rulers, which they constantly proclaim via their propaganda mass media, and think they are well informed and true to reality.

Anyone who simply accepts this without being blamed is completely taken in by the framing and is ultimately also a victim of the information war.

The only thing that I see more clearly than ever in the matter is that the power structures, with the help of progress and by infiltrating the key positions, can exercise far too much power and control the people through system structure and opinion making, like lemmings alien…
That should worry us, since this takes ever more brutally monstrous forms, which let us drift into dictatorships, and/or we are already on the half way there arrived, if not still further!

Take this junk to reddit/twitter.

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It’s not required reading. People are working off stress twitter and reddit increase stress.

Not our problem. Take it to Oprah then.

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Russia doesn’t want NATO at their front door. Just like we wouldn’t want Iran at our front door. This is the Russian version of the American/Cuban Missle Crisis.

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First the technology has changed since the 1960s. Second Latvia and Estonia say hi. This isn’t even about NATO it’s about Putin’s ambitions and more importantly about oil and natural gas.

No thank you.

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You’re entitled to your opinion, that’s what makes America great.