Joining companies including EA and Microsoft
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, more games companies have decided to suspend some business with Russia. In the past few days, Activision Blizzard, Epic, and CD Projekt (including GOG) all announced plans to stop selling games or stop selling things in games to Russia, joining a list which also includes EA and Microsoft.
Update:Also joining them,Ubisoft suspending sales in Russiaand Take-Twosuspending sales in Russia and Belarus.
“Epic is stopping commerce with Russia in our games in response to its invasion of Ukraine,” the companytweetedon Saturday. But they’re not outright blocking Russia, they made clear, explaining, “We’re not blocking access for the same reason other communication tools remain online: the free world should keep all lines of dialogue open.”
Activision Blizzard president and COO Daniel Alegreannouncedon Friday that they “will be suspending new sales of and in our games in Russia while this conflict continues”. He also noted that the company are “matching employee donations 2:1 to organisations providing immediate relief in the region”, together raising over $300,000 (£228k) so far. They also plan to increase the amount they match, and expand this scheme to a wider range of charities too.
CD Projekt also announced on Thursday that they would “halt all sales of our games to Russia and Belarus”. As well as stopping digital sales and physical stock deliveries for games they’ve made, which include the CD Projekt Red studio’sCyberpunk 2077and The Witcher games, they’re cutting the territories off from the PC digital game store the group run, GOG.
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As we previously reported, EA announced last week they wereremoving Russian teams from Fifa 22and removing Russian and Belarussian teams from NHL 22, then later said they’d outrightstop selling games and virtual currencies in Russia and Belarus.Microsoft announcedthat they’re suspending sales and services in Russia, too.
