What’s the alternative? They have to obey the law, right? What should they have done? How is this “bowing to Kremlin” as if they’re kneeling, waiting to suck their dick or something.

Genuinely curious about these questions.

It is, but the alternative is that everything would get pirated instead. And like Trump, Russia is fishing for a “woke” escape goat to continue to come up with excuses to shut down exposure outside of the state controlled media, which Steam provides.

If Steam goes out of Russia, there will be a state sanctioned pirate streaming service for games, and it will include spyware. Steam isn’t just one entity, it is an entity for every country it decides to operate in.

Still, I’m not going to complete defend Valve on this, but at least they aren’t pulling a “many gamers complained about this and we listened” card. They also didn’t remove the game from the store in its entirely just because Russia was complaining, but limited access to it locally.

Maybe Valve should get out of Russia, but I don’t see this negatively affecting Russians as much as it will make the bubble they live in even more closed off. VPNs would be an alternative if Russia wasn’t criminalizing them.

? Curious, any good places to look into this?

Your choice as Valve here is to either delist or not be in Russia. It is easy for me, as someone not in Russia, to cheer Valve to fight the good fight. But, it would suck if I were in Russia and suddenly lost access to my games.

CSGO trolls from Russia probably make up like 20% of their total revenue.

But, it would suck if I were in Russia and suddenly lost access to my games.

Another reason not to rely on steam as a central point of failure.

The alternative is to stop doing business with Russia.

They can be part of the problem, or part of the solution.

They chose the problem.

I don’t really get what anyone expects Valve to do here other than comply with the law.

Lol.

Would that really be a bad thing?

Steam is one service Russians can’t easily replace. If their backwards policies prevent it from operating there, maybe they would take steps to change them.

Everyday things like furnishings, food, how people treat each other, and so forth.

Russia is not a post-apocalyptic hellscape (yet). They have pretty much the same food and furnishing as anyone else in the west. And learning about how people across the world treat each other from video games sounds like a horrible idea.

Russians have been consuming US culture slop for a long while. Turns out, it doesn’t help.

there’s also a troubling trend in the gaming industry for the very most right wing propaganda to be promoted and pushed alongside gaming content. steam is not the true exposure to liberating ideology that will wake the chauvinists up. far more likely to make them go, “see, this is how the world works.”

A: Videogames are not just made by the US. As it turns out, Europe, Asia, Africa, and many other places create stuff. It is a way for people to explore other cultures, without needing a plane ticket nor permission from governments.

B: Russia isn’t known for its general prosperity for the ordinary person. Also, it is in a state of war, which means less of everything that people like. Constant reminders of what isn’t there, may speed an end to Russia’s aggression. Hopefully, things will go Nepalese.

Be it books, games, or movies, the fundamental crux in many of them revolves around the interactions of people. A major element of videogames is helping out people and being helped in turn, trading things, meeting folks with different ideas and appearances, ect. These are good things for people to learn.

Nah, they actively got worse as authoritarian governments are wont to do.

How is valve doing business with Russia? Are they selling games to the government? Games are for the public, right? The public isn’t at war, Putin is.

Let me know if this is a bad take, what am I missing.

For the rubles, of course.

What Steam should do, and what every other country and business should do is leave russia (and israel etc etc etc). They should completely stop importing or exporting until that country starts to play nice with others.
The. Fucking. End.
If they are invading/causing genocide/generally be cunts then 100% ignore and sanction that country. Nothing in, nothing out. Physically or digitally. Nothing. Fuck 'em until they stop being scummy pieces of shit.

It won’t happen, obviously, because nearly every politician and upper corporate ghouls are corrupt. But that’s what should happen.

Not a defense, but aren’t a lot of the steam games at least runnable without the front end?

Not as much as GOG obviously, but some ?

I don’t see how it advances any objective like Ukraine or identity politics issue by Valve not being in Russia. On the contrary, the more people buy from valve puts currency strain on Russia and exports western culture to them.

That just fucks over gamers, not the Russian government.

The alternative is to stop doing business in places where laws are being used to restrict the games available.

Don’t get me wrong, fuck the russian government and the horse they rode in on, but unless you have a defend-able reason that russia should be singled out in this context your argument is emotional rhetoric and little else.

You could perhaps narrow that down to a subset of applicable laws, but i’d lay good money that any group/type of laws you pick are not go only contain russia and still be able to be considered a reasonable argument.