With the ongoing brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, many more companies are taking action and now GOG has made a big announcement with their store.
Here's the statement they provided about the decision to suspend activities in Russia and Belarus
In light of the Russian military invasion in our neighboring country of Ukraine, until further notice, we made the decision to halt all sales in Russia and Belarus.
Effective March 3rd, 2022, we suspend sales of all games distributed on the GOG platform on the territories of Russia and Belarus. While buying products on GOG is not possible, users from the affected territories can still log in to their accounts and keep access to purchased items.
The entire CD PROJEKT Group stands firm with the people of Ukraine. While we are not a political entity capable of directly influencing state matters, and don’t aspire to be one, we do believe that commercial entities, when united, have the power to inspire global change in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. We know that players in Russia and Belarus, individuals who have nothing to do with the invasion of Ukraine, will be impacted by this decision, but with this action we wish to further galvanize the global community to speak about what is going on in the heart of Europe.
GOG has also recently, which I missed (sorry!), been helping a few developers give 100% of the sales money to charity. This includes games like This War of Mine, Slipways, MouseCraft and more. It's not up for much longer though.
This is just a PR move, and I kinda hope it blows up in their faces.
Quoting: GuestI came here expecting some political blathering, Im not dissapointed.Let's just appreciate for now people seem to be mostly respectful about it.
Last edited by eldarion on 4 March 2022 at 12:04 pm UTC
Quoting: GuestI came here expecting some political blathering, Im not dissapointed.
I came here to read some contemptuous messages on writings from other people discussing about what structure their life, liked by the owner, and Im not disappointed.
Also, on a side note, I would like this approach so much more...
Quoting: damarrinYeah, I don’t agree with gog here. They should keep selling the games and donate all proceeds they make from those sales to Ukraine. And put up a big banner telling their Russian costumers they’re doing it, let them vote with their wallets.
Quoting: FurysparkWhere were everyone's sanctions against China when they took over Hong Kong? Among probably at least a dozen other examples.
This is just a PR move, and I kinda hope it blows up in their faces.
There have been at least 20 sanctions against China since 1949, nothing as global as today's sanctions against Russia but I can promise you that if China decided to invade Taiwan they would be put under equal sanctions as Russia is today.
Quoting: johndoeQuoting: slapinNobody is actually willing to hear the sad truth, the propaganda sounds more comfortable.
If this is the truth, then any russian is simply dump... and I don't think so.
Honstly I believe they fear to get arrested and vanish... another sign of a dictators power.
It's easy to think this way but unfortunately you don't have to be dumb to be fooled by propaganda, it works just as good on Einstein level geniuses as the local village idiot. And that is why it exists, had it only affected the dumb people then no one would have ever bothered with it since the value would be minimal.
As an example just go over to Phoronix right now, people who are normally sane and of average intelligence are now there spewing insane ideas of Putin liberating the Ukrainian population from Nazis and so forth.
Quoting: F.UltraQuoting: johndoeQuoting: slapinNobody is actually willing to hear the sad truth, the propaganda sounds more comfortable.
If this is the truth, then any russian is simply dump... and I don't think so.
Honstly I believe they fear to get arrested and vanish... another sign of a dictators power.
It's easy to think this way but unfortunately you don't have to be dumb to be fooled by propaganda, it works just as good on Einstein level geniuses as the local village idiot. And that is why it exists, had it only affected the dumb people then no one would have ever bothered with it since the value would be minimal.
As an example just go over to Phoronix right now, people who are normally sane and of average intelligence are now there spewing insane ideas of Putin liberating the Ukrainian population from Nazis and so forth.
People prefer their information bubble, also lots of people are true animals now and enjoy people suffering,
and I'd say about 50% people are like this now. I don't understand how people having kids going to school
can become as animalistic... but remembering 1945 Germans I guess it is the same phenomenon.
People just deny what they see or when they see and believe it happens they think Putin can't be wrong, so if
Putin eats people then this is right thing to do, so they have to praise it and follow the trend. And it will
be very hard to make them understand (and sanctions won't work because logic will be misunderstood). And if these
people left alone they will end up building nazi state next and danger will not go away.
Quoting: haspadarlet me step in, i'm from Belarus. I understand the GOG's move but i must clarify the situation in Belarus. We protested against lukashenko in 2020-21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Belarusian_protests. Personally i was in a custody because of it. There were tortures and at least 15 people were killed during protests. We are UNDER OCCUPATION now by fascist regimes. People of Belarus do not support war! They hate and despise putler/lukashenko. We live like in GULAG now. And even now people try to protest. 800 were detained in one day at anti-war protests. Some even began a rail war by destroying rw infrastructure to break russian troops supply chain.
Sabotaging Russian troops does sound helpful. If Ukraine falls, that can't be good for Belarus either.
Come to think of it, best outcome would come from revolution. Current regime is not considered trustworthy and current situation has opened some old wounds, especially in countries that have been previously been occupied Russia (or Soviet Union to be exact in most of the cases). Even if current regime would back out, that would probably not end all sanctions.
If key people die, go into exile or something similar, there's no guarantee that replaced by anything better. Military coup would have similar risks.
As for if revolution and would actually have impact, Arab Spring was quite massive set of uprisings with varied outcomes. There have been also studies what made the difference between successful and unsuccessful uprising. I haven't read the actual studies, but Wikipedia mentions that countries with infrastructure in good shape and low levels of corruption could have chance. Level of censorship is also a factor.
In case of Belarus having Russian troops in the country doesn't though help at all.
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