Shadowstalker16: I see many topics about GOG ceasing services in Russia and people justifying / arguing against it. But most people don't seem to understand that the same logic that this multimillion dollar corporation uses to shun the country they hate can also be used against them one day. They think that its fine here because ''its justified'' and that a for-profit corporation will only do ''justified'' things.

I think we all can learn a valuable lesson from this. No games company or corporation is your friend, no matter how much they appear to be on twitter / social media. Their ''support'' or condemnation is purely based on balancing the gains from supporting vs condemning something and to go around saying any company is ''based'' for this or that decision is playing right into their hands.

You give money, they give you your games; quid pro quo, there is nothing more in that relationship. Thinking otherwise is just PR doing its job.

I am reminded of other instances where ''cool'' companies showed their true colors and took quite uncool steps to improve their public image by throwing people they were earlier profiting off of under the bus; like when Apple censored games on its store with the Confederate flag or when Blizzard kicked a Hong Kong independence-supporting Hearthstone player from a tournament and kneeled down to appease wolf warriors on Chinese social media. I see this as nothing different.

Companies can do what they want but I hope everyone is as sobered by this as I am. You are a ''valuable customer'' only because your ''value'' is is more than the value they (they being any big company or corporation) can get in throwing you under the bus for petty brownie points on social media. They are not your friends.

Morkar: Corporations have to comply to the rules of their country. I doubt gog can even decide for themselves to do further business with Russian customers. And even if they could the risk and effort to do it would become too much of a burden for the business (no bank or creditcard company could back up and guarantee for the money transferred).

And russian oligarchs lose a lot more money like probably whole yachts instead of not being able to buy games. Not Putin ofc he managed to evacuate his yacht before without telling his buddies what will happen.

Besides that there is a huge difference between a war where people get nuked to death and not being able to buy a computer game. Millions of families lose everything they had. If they are lucky and not losing their lifes.

Shadowstalker16: The announcement itself says ''CDProjekt Red has made the decision''. Its not a government imposed restriction. And for a company to make a political decision would require putting it through legal and PR and risk assessment before doing so. They're just getting their blow in when its profitable morally justifiable (according to twitter) to do so.

Morkar: How do Russians pay for the games then? Credit cards like Visa or Mastercard? And even if it would still be possible now it won't be in the future. The western (and world) economy right now is busy getting rid of any assets in Russia and redirect their investments. It became too risky to do business with Russia because Putin decided to raise the iron curtain again. That means it's hghly likely that Russians won't be able to buy products in democratic countries in the future. I guess China will cover such services for Russia then. Thanks to one guy it's a cold war now that could even turn into a hot one. You should be more worried about other goods than games tbh.

_Line: In other words, they're deciding to exclude users from their clientbase based on a political situation that could happen "anywhere".
Russia and Belarus citizens are excluded from the store for now and they wont make any deal with them, because of their government.

Morkar: You underestimate the magnitude of whole situation. First it's not "anywhere", War happens directly at the border of Poland. Right now there are already over a million of refugees crossing the border of Poland. Unfortunately Russia is the sole aggressor but Putin likes to blame Nato for it. Poland is a member of the Nato. That means Poland is indirectly threatened too. As is the whole Nato and democracies in general.

There is no connected "world economy" anymore like it was before. Putin decided to crush that structure and cut it into two halves. It became too risky for most democratic businesses on a financial level basically overnight.

This is for gog as much political as it is economical and I guess from a legal point of view too. No hidden evil corporation agenda here. The world simply changed because of resent actions from the Kreml.

_Line: A decision that could in practice help their territory to fight for Europe safety in this conflict in my humble opinion:
Donate a % of their sales to Ukraine humanitarian orgs.