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.
It's not about the games though. It's about the precendent this kind of corporation decision opens.
The probable sujective reasons for why CDPR did this can be discussed, but we're talking about an objective decision:
GOG:
https://www.gog.com/en/news/suspending_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.
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.
Of course in a third war crysis situation people wouldn't focus on games. But, if a situation in another country, that isn't russian/belarus citizen's fault is enought for them to literally don't accept them as probable customers with the 'objective' to make other companies and nations aware of this situation, who will guarantee to the rest of us (customers from other countries) that they will not repeat this action with something else that they might say is right or wrong?
There is no logical reason in this.
Many people and countries are doing this:
Person A attacks Country C -> Person A from Country A -> Person A is BAD -> Country A, therefore, BAD (Fallacy)
Putin invading Ukraine -> Putin BAD -> Putin from Russia -> Russia, therefore BAD (Fallacy)
CDPR is recognizing that this patern makes no sense, but they still decided to do it anyways to 'make other countries aware' - or - 'speak about this'? What?
There's no logic in this.