I mean…
Steam continues to operate in Russia despite sanctions, allowing Russian players to access and pay for games through workarounds. At the same time, Steam has complied with Russian censorship demands—removing titles or restricting access when ordered by state agencies.
Shouldn’t we let all online companies operate in Russia but with crazy jacked up prices and use whatever increased profit margins? If sb wants to buy a game with a local banking company he’ll have to pay up. By removing ourselves from russian commerce we’re making space for them to gain high levels of independence away from the West, and that’s not how we achieved (mostly) peace in Europe
And existing measures are not on Steam, but payment processors. Valve got free rep doing nothing.
On the other hand I imagine profits and playerbase are not why they are still there, but their previous decision to wire up the whole region via russian servers and general refusal to moderate anything at all keeping the company as small as possible.
It’d be hard to keep serving current owners while stopping all new sales, particularly for live products.
It’d be certainly easier to do that than having to move the entire operation to a different country on account of an issue you may or may not be aligned with yout authoritarian government on, though, so… If we’re doing this article in the first place they wouldn’t be at the top of the empathy chain.
Tbh my issue is not so much games as Russian players. Don’t wanna play with them at all so I use a Vpn to get me us east servers. Worth it not to put up with them. Grant If i didn’t wanna deal with them I shouldn’t play CS2 or Hunt showdown.
Using a vpn only goes so far as some games (Dayz for example) won’t let you play using one.
if you have no issue buying russian games, your home will be bombed next by russians. believe me, I’m Ukrainian living in Kyiv, Ukraine.
That’s not what I said …what makes you think some who expressly doesn’t wanna play with Russians would suddenly wanna buy Russian made games.
Blow them up in eve online
I’m curious if there is a curated list of games by European studios/publishers.
Surprised to read some titles I’ve heard about before in there. Not that any of them remotely interest me. Not a fan of shooters.
The most brazen example is Squad 22: ZOV, released on Steam in May 2025 and openly endorsed by Russia’s Defense Ministry.
Now as I checked it’s page, I’m pretty sure to assume it’s more of a grift, or only a grift, and probably only internal, but wtf it’s on Steam? I thought Valve has at least some policies. And while they slack on any moderation, they only have so much products and did some formal review before accepting it on their platform and saw no problem? I’m out of words.
I’ll still play them. I don’t care about politics in my games, except that of exterminating alien species
Removed by mod
They are too busy trying to live paycheck to paycheck like to complain about others
Which ones do I not play which support the US clearly supporting genocide of Palestine?
I remember joking back before the 2022 invasion “If valve threatens to cut them off from CS:GO, that’ll stop them”
I also found a steam curator that lists all Russian linked games. I can’t verify the validity of the list, so take it with a grain of salt:
the best curator I use. but there are false-positives and false-negatives. one should conduct to their community forum to double-check.
I have been noticing propaganda in games for ages. At least since Metal Gear Solid IV.
Thanks that’s very good to know
Buy 30 copies of Stalker 2 instead.
But also: I thought Tarkov was kinda shady not being on Steam or any other reputable store (including gags EGS). I would have totally scooped it up when I came to Steam without having seen this.
Not selling on steam isn’t shady. Maybe they believe that the 30% steam cut isn’t worth it.
All DRM stores are shady. Some are extra shady.
War Thunder is not Russian in the same way Gazprom technically isn’t. Both companies being located elsewhere on paper but we all know that’s just a technicality.
