I thought subscriptions were no longer possible for Russians? Or did I misunderstand that?
Subscriptions and playing any classic version - possible (via prepaid 2 month gametime card, that can be activated on russian acc without any VPNs or something else, and also possible to pay with gold wow token). Playing new addon, and new games released after 24.02.2022 such as diablo 4 - not
1 Like
Blizzard’ve never stopped providing services for Russian registered accounts and international sanctions have never included any line that could be interpreted as “…and Russians also shouldn’t play our games”. The implied contradiction from the OP question
is hence meaningless and doesn’t quite relate to the premise.
What has happened instead, was Blizzard made access to their games for Russia registered accounts more convoluted, and, albeit a bit heavy-handed and probably rushed, it went in vein with the general international attitude of the moment. And it worked exactly as it was expected: it’s considerably harder now for such accounts to maintain both the game time and the actual game version. The people who still manage to do that, though, generally speaking, don’t breach any laws nor violate ToS or whatever – even as there could be individual exceptions which do exactly that.
As a Russian who is not willing to pay that much for a Collection Edition’s key, you might also consider making a new account and continue playing. You wouldn’t need any VPN or anything of the like for that, just be mindful of SWIFT ban that have nothing to do with Blizzard.
and how will comapnies recover money when all those banking channels are under sanctions ? they cant accept peanuts from russia as payment . why will i sell you anything when i cannot recover that amount from you directly?
So there is politics in this game. Do these words have any other meaning?
Couldn’t the same thing happen in your country tomorrow? Are any countries playing the game? None of us have any guarantees. The same may happen tomorrow. This is politics, it has no other meaning.
Yes is Britain invaded a country or whatever and was sanctioned globally I would expect there to be all sorts of issues with access for Brits.
Is it valid for every country? think carefully.
I do not need to think carefully. Sanctions are sanctions.
Blizzard do not get to opt out and even if it was the UK I wouldn’t change anything.
Which international institution decides to impose sanctions? I would be happy if you share the link.
You do not understand how sanctions work?
For Russia specifically this article covers a lot of the sanctions imposed by various countries, groups of countries etc.
Blizzard do not choose the sanctions but they aren’t exempt from them. They just follow the rules set on them.
I still haven’t seen the international institution’s decision.
It’s clear to me that you don’t actually care about sanctions or how they are imposed. You just want to complain that they exist. The article clearly shows many of the governments and groups of countries imposing sanctions.
So I will leave you to it.
Another law has been derived from international lawlessness. How true it is for a person to always see himself as right.
Also, you did not share the link to any international sanction decision. What Russia is doing is not legal. It caused millions of people to die for no reason. It is not right to blame this on an entire people.
I can imagine practically it feels this way. As if the people are punished for the choices of their government. Which is tricky once you’re dealing with governments that are not genuinely democratically chosen. This is not the intention of the sanctions tho, it’s to force these governments to reconsider their actions. As to how effective it is, that’s a different matter. The fact it can affect the people very much sucks tho, I think quite a few people are sympathetic towards that even if they support the sanctions.
Steam is also not allowed to do business within russia, and it doesn’t allow russian players to buy games (cards are blocked, wallet can only be refilled via 3rd party resellers).
The key part is that Steam is basically a marketplaces for hundreds (thousands?) of developers, and that’s why it works differently. There are no direct finance operations between Steam and russian customers, so on the paper it receive all the money from some 3rd party agent, and no one cares how this 3rd party agent got those money, thus technically Steam is clean.
Blizzard works with customers directly, so selling anything in russia is basically a self-headshot for them. Aaaaand that’s why you still can buy and play their games using 3rd party resellers, it’s just not “embedded into UI”, like it is in case of Steam.
If it’s your money - it’s only up to you to decide how to use them. But who you are to dig into other people wallets and dictate them, how they should spend their shinies?
If there is demand - there is supply. That’s it. If price for CE is still that high, some people are ready to but it for that price. Just let them be.
And yeah, Blizz are kinda have to follow the sanction rules, not like they have a choice, so there is no hypocrisy or short-sightedness.
To be fair, I believe it would be hell lot easier for them just to drop ru-region completely, and release themselves from the headache, yet here you are - can purchase TWW with both, text and audio, russian localization.
1 Like
You dont see the point. There are no any governement sanctions that dont allow american companies (at least gaming companies) to recieve money from russian people. There are some payment system sanctions (visa, mastercard), they are as private companies dont work with russia anymore so you can’t pay directly from credit card in most situations from russia. But again it doesnt mean that american companies aren’t allowed to get money from russia. They can - if they find a way (for exmaple, in app store you can pay from some russian phone operators - directly from app store, without any 3rd party sites). Payment system sanctons are only private companies sanctions and not government
This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.