ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

Ukraine calls upon games industry to take action against Russia

Ukraine calls upon games industry to take action against Russia

The vice prime minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, has called upon the games industry to not do business in Russia.

In a post on Twitter, the politician posted a statement directed at platform holders Xbox and PlayStation, asking for games companies to "to temporarily block all Russian and Belorussian accounts, temporarily stop the participation of Russian and Belorussian teams and gamers in all international esports events and cancel all international events holding on the territory of Russia and Belarus."

Since then, Fedorov has directed this message to other games companies, including Epic, Nintendo, Rockstar, 2K, Bandai Namco, Tencent, Valve and Twitch.

"Russia [has] showed [its] true face," he wrote. "It doesn’t have any respect for the principles and humanity. Stop this by halting your games in Russia!"

This follows the IGDA calling upon the games industry to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Digital marketplace DMarket has blocked Russian and Belarusian accounts. 


Tags:
PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.