I wonder if this includes micro transactions in hots as well. To all the techies out there: How do the swift bans affect blizzards ability to pay for services in russia/accept payment?
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If only HotS had them
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what’s that gonna do? Revive the game? lol
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It’s good company PR, even if it’s a tad late.
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With whatever reputation Blizzard has left.
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I really fail to see what kind of positive impact this could produce.
If it was me, I would just have the profits of all sales from Russian markets be sent to Ukrainian refugee help.
- A bunch of Russian kids can’t play some video games
- ???
- The war ends.
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Just trying to avoid bad PR. The Russian ruble has plummeted so it’s not like they were gonna make any money.
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Sales taxes/land taxes are still a thing. Blizzard would normally being paying some of this money to the Russian government. Not to mention that it pays for employees in russia/supports russian businesses. Without blizzard these jobs are let go.
Its about making life in Russia untenable until it ends its invasion of Ukraine. Life shouldn’t go back to normal for them until it can go back to normal for Ukranians. Not to mention that I dont want to play games with Russians who support the invasion.
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On that point, there are Russians who risked their lives to protest the invasion of Ukraine. Personally I wouldn’t want lump everyone in a nation as having the same goals or attitudes as their government.
I agree with you it’s a good thing that Blizzard has done, even if the motives are probably only PR related.
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Putin is vastly popular in Russia. He’s always been popular in Russia and these invasions tend to help him out on that front. The people going out to protest aren’t the ones trying to pretend like nothing is happening by hopping on for a game of hots.
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Vastly popular leaders don’t need to imprison popular opposition leaders and rig elections. This isn’t the place to speak about these matters, but it’s not a simple black and white issue.
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Why are they punishing the Russians?
It is just the one guy.
I have actually been to Volgograd for a month, and also visited St Petersburg and Moscow. The train made a couple stops in a couple of smaller villages too.
They are people just like us. I went to clubs with them, rode the busses with them, and went to the beach with them.
They have malls, bowling, theaters, and all the stuff we do. Just they are on that side of the planet and that is their leader. It doesn’t make sense to me that we punish their people.
Their leader isn’t impacted if they don’t have HOTS. If he played HOTS, maybe I could understand this.
Oh I had misunderstood. They are talking about blizz new sales. Nevermind, I don’t care. As long as the long term fans are not being punished.
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Yes, but that’s still way less than the money Blizzard could donate from those sales.
Those are jobs in stores that sell games (And I can’t imagine there are a lot of physical Blizzard games being sold anyway). I don’t think hurting these employees is a good thing.
You can’t possibly know which of them support the war. 20 000+ people have already been arrested for protesting it. Knowing that they could be arrested.
Every day, you’re going to play with people who support all sort of crap. And you’ll never know it.
No man. There are soldiers deserting! And no one in Russia asked for this war. The population is not behind it.
A lot of Russians are just scared that a bomb will drop on their heads when their President’s pissed off too many people. When a head of state declares a war, the people in the country don’t automatically agree with it.
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Theres tons of literature avaliable on diversionary wars and how authoritarian leaders use them to increase their support. Putin’s rise to infamy came from the actions in Chechnya. Polls from a variety of Western sources have supported this. Whether he’s still popular is a different story, but Russians are probably going to be protesting their hungry stomachs and empty shelves rather than a war that doesn’t impact them at all. Removing services such as blizzard’s games is one way to get them out and protesting.
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They are already protesting the war…
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In many ways due to sanctions that have wiped out their savings. The protests at the factory recently were because of pay issues, not humanitarian goals. People care more about their wallets and thats what we have to hit.
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I also don’t want to play with the Americans and Europe who bombed Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia… Who have just woken up, although Ukrainian troops have been bombing civilians in eastern Ukraine for 8 years.
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Not talking about factories. It started the day Russia invaded.
But either way, there is no way you can make Citizens responsible for a war. It’s not their choice. Countries don’t do a referendum to decide if they go to war or not. One person just says go.
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Unless the service violates a US sanction, they would be doing this entirely voluntarily, possibly out of morale protest.
Another reason for them to do this is that they might not be able to process the Rubles they get paid. For a US company owning Rubles in Russia that cannot be converted efficiently or legally to USD or Euro is pointless and you might as well be giving the stuff away, especially given that the Ruble is suffering/will suffer massive inflation so by the time any sanctions are lifted to allow conversion the amount might be as good as worthless.
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It’s a PR move.
It’d matter if we were looking at a major gas or oil company, because they’re the biggest source of Russia’s international trade income, but they’re all refusing because that’d cut into their profit margins too much.
So for a company like Acti/Blizz (which definitely doesn’t really care about ending the war in Ukraine for moral reasons), it’s just cheap PR because they’re not really sacrificing anything they haven’t already lost.
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