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Valve bows to Kremlin: LGBTQ+ solitaire game [Flick Solitaire] pulled from russian Steam [cited a 2006 federal law prohibiting the "promotion of non-traditional sexualities"] (www.player.one)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 78 points 9 months ago (7 children)

Pulling out of Russia entirely is an option. It's not like they're relying on them to stay in business.

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  • [–] 55 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Well, given the sanctions, this ought to be a given. I don't understand how valve can operate in Russia at all tbh.

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  • [–] 22 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Right? That was my question, why are they operating there at all right now

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    Valve had a big piracy problem in russia and it was ofc because of service issues. While I obviously don't agree with this censorship and would prefer valve to entirely pull out of russia, I can see why they are absolutely not doing that. They want to provide the best PC gaming store service across the world, and they don't want competitors or piracy to eat into their sales

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago*

    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.

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