To simplify things a bit: companies exist to make money, that’s their prime directive. Governments exist to make and enforce rules.
If Steam is allowed to operate freely in Russia, the government is not doing its job.
Breed for your dictator russia. Produce meat shields at maximum efficiency.
I don’t really know why they feel they need to Cave to Russian pressure here. They have all the cards. Russia will never ever stop Steam from running in Russia. If they try to cut off Counter-Strike the entire country would collapse immediately. I’m 100% serious that is not sarcasm at all.
What’s preventing Russians from hacking Counter-Strike and making their own “Кантр-Страйк” servers?
Exactly nothing.
I mean, there’s DRM but that hasn’t stopped them ever before…
Do they stand to lose something if they switch? I don’t understand CS:GO economics, maybe there is a sanction-evading money flow via weapon and skin trading on Valve’s servers?
Unlikely? There are 3rd party websites that allow liquidation, but that’s all outside of Valve’s sites. The closest you can get to liquidation officially is buying Valve hardware like a Steam Deck with your store credit, but they don’t ship steam hardware to russia.
I wasn’t saying the exchange for money happens on Valve’s servers, but it’s Valve who oversees everyone’s inventory. You could hack the game and run a third party account server and give yourself all the knives but they would not be recognized by Valve and thus worthless, unless you convince exchanges that your server is trustworthy and has assets behind it.
Ah, in terms of the Steam inventory API, it’s completely unregulated. All purchases are steam platform only, but trades between players are unmonitored (with the exception of requiring both sides to authenticate the trade).
Why do anything to appeal to fucking Russian regime bullshit? Tell them to fuck off! Cowards.
Steam always chose the path of least resistance when it comes to dealing with law maker demands even when there were more consumer friendly ways available. This is not surprising at all.
Because Gaben is a libertarian fuckwit.
Fuck his greedy ass. And fuck G*mers defending his monopoly.
So Steam is still doing business in Russia? I actually thought they were better than that.
Corporations are amoral things. Money is money, it has no frontiers.
How and why do they even access Steam? The Internet and Computers aren‘t „traditional ways“ of communicating and video games are not „traditional ways“ of entertainment. Do they reject modern medicine too for being „non-traditional“? Seriously out of all the anti progress bullshit, this is the dumbest aspect.
Email Gabe, here:
I did back in 2015 when I was an edgy idiot, upset about their removal of the game Hatred because it is literally a spree shooting simulator. And I was all like “free speech”. And Gabe actually replied! And put the game back up too.
So email him. He might reply.
I mailed him about some completely random bullshit something like 20 years ago
And he actually replied a couple days later (even if with only a short sentence)
Nontraditional sexualities huh? Pretty sure being gay happened way before Russia or any previous nation on that land
That was my first thought - aren’t homosexual relationships documented in Greek and Roman culture, among others?
That sounds very traditional to me!
So Valve does not accept money from russian users directly (the roundabout methods are well known by russian users and Valve does nothing in this case even though it acts against similar methods when publishers make the call), so why would they even care what Roskomnadzor says? What can Roskomnadzor do to Valve?
I will note that Valve also does nothing about genocidal imperialist russian reviews on this DLC for support of Ukraine in Workers and Resources:
I’m from Donetsk. We have been bombarded since 2014 by the state in which I was born and lived. Declaring us enemies of the people. I am for the Russian SVO. Buy a dls only because of the Zaporizhia NPP, it is well made <3
You can check the number of civilians deaths in Donbas in 2014 vs 2022 to present and look at what happened to cities like Bahmut during the russian invasion. Not to mention the 1.5 million Ukrainians who had to leave just in 2014 (including my family members).
And yet we have to hear faux-libertarian polemics about alleged belief in “freedom of speech” and arrogant gibberish about “I am a free speech absolutist!” from individuals who know nothing about the value of free speech.
I said it before and I will say it again, American companies cannot be relied upon as a source of digital services. Both for systematic reasons (submission to the local oligarch/criminal regime) and philosophical reasons (a culture of ignorance and lack of desire to go beyond theatrical proclamations about freedom of this or freedom of that).
Let’s say you think I am being uncharitable in my attitude. Then tell me, why does Valve even read notices from Roskomnadzor (not to mention implementing their orders)? Russia is sanctioned and they are not supposed be able to make purchases at all. And yet Valve feels the need to follow orders from Roskomnadzor. What’s the logic here?
I think they think that losing steam access would just rocket piracy not only in Russia but in the entire world. Getting russian market on legal games has been a multi decade process and that would really suck for the industry.
Not saying thats right just that it be their reasoning
I respect your reasoning and I agree that it would massively increase piracy in russia, but remember, russia is sanctioned; Valve isn’t supposed to be selling to russians in the first place.
Disagree on impact on global piracy rates. Pirated games were widely available via public russia sources such as rutracker.org.
You don’t even need to know russian as all titles have english headings.
Here is a link to Vampire Bloodlines 2, originally release on October 21st, with consistent updates since then, last one being on November 18th:
https://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6761118
You don’t need to speak russian to figure out what “magnet-ссылке” with a magnet icon refers to.
Russia is sanctioned and they are not supposed be able to make purchases at all.
Might want to try finding sources for this, because you’ll discover this is untrue.
From the article:
For context, Steam currently doesn’t allow direct purchases by Russian players, in accordance with western sanctions, so Russian buyers have to make use of workarounds such as third-party key resellers.
Btw, I knew this before reading the article. Do a web search around how these workarounds operate (the example cited by RPS isn’t the only one).
There are no ‘Western sanctions’ that prohibit from selling stuff to all Russians. Visa and MasterCard stopped doing cross-border transactions by their own decision, and most Russian banks are cut off from SWIFT. That’s all, aside from more individual and sector-specific sanctions.
How does that contradict what I said?
You think living in Ukraine, I would be aware of the exact scope of sanctions against russia (and the massive loopholes)?
i’ll note that, as the article mentions, even apple and google haven’t removed the game in russia (at least not yet)
are valve complicit, or just cowards?
Both, they’ve always capitulated to states for that juicy 1% profit margin
Honestly, that’s very surprising.
Why are they doing business in Russia?
They started their business in there a while ago (I believe they were the first online distributor who managed to succeed in the Russian market, despite media fears of mass piracy), and I would imagine that revoking all of the users’ Steam Libraries wouldn’t be a popular move, or terminating all their accounts.
I’m not sure why they continued purchases after 2022 though. Maybe their Eastern Europe payment processor doesn’t ask too many questions?
