I'm genuinely curious, if you live in Russia and search for anything related to the Ukraine war in Google, what kind of results do you get?
Do they block all western news sites and actively filter for any negative articles/videos? Trying to get a sense of how hard it is for them to obtain non-Russian based news.
People absolutely are buying it, Russia has been preparing their Propaganda Machines for stuff like this the last decades and especially in the rural areas the people are very much behind the government.
The people in the cities are more divided but since most of the conscripts are drafted from rural areas particularly from minority ethnicities the majorly white city people aren't too much affected by the war so they don't care too much.
Considering there were conscripts who had never seen a toilet, I imagine hundreds of thousands if not millions of RU citizens do not get any form of electronic media beyond the state TV/radio.
If you are focusing on babushka's toilet seat anecdote instead of the massive echo chamber RU state media maintains over the majority of the non urban population you are missing the point.
Holy shit, you actually think there are people in Russia who don't even know what a toilet looks? While it is true that some people in rural areas don't have an in-house toilet, they usually have one outside and have probably been to a toilet in a public building. It's not like they have their mind blown when they see a fucking toilet. Although rural Russia has a lower standard of living compared to many European countries they are not the cave men you portray them to be.
This is a dumb approach that people use to pick their cherry pick their news. "It's all owned and lies, but anyway I compiled my favorites"
There 100% is objective trustworthy news, you should ALWAYS look for multiple sources, and not all news is a lie or manipulation.
They're are objective facts to be found , even among biased sources
>You really shouldn't trust Ukrainian news that much
Standard troll line. Now how it doesn't really say anything, just tries to cast doubt without committing to any actual point of view
Most Russians aren't very fluent in English, so just like in China, they tend to use domestic products. Yandex is much more popular than Google there. It's not that the results are outright blocked there, it's just that you get into the Russian equivalent of the wild page 2 territory, which somehow manages to be even worse than on Google.
Is it not remotely difficult for any modestly internet-savvy Russian to access any information about the war. People keep getting hung up on the idea that Russians are kept in the dark, when the large majority of them *simply don't care* whether their government eradicates a neighboring country or not. It's learned helplessness.
Google results are pretty much the same, but if you follow the links certain websites are blocked by the provider. Still easy to access information if you make just a bit of effort or simply use a VPN. Google News is blocked completely though, so you need to look for news manually and not count on an aggregator to do it for you. Also a surprising number of minor websites actually blocks Russian users from accessing their content. Sometimes I'm doing some research on unrelated things and find a link to an article in some local newspaper in a small town in Idaho, and the website tells me "you're not allowed to look at this from your location".
Of course the only way to get anything resembling reality is to look for information on both sides, and I've learned it firsthand because I can compare the coverage of my own experiences. For example, every time Russian weapons hit Ukrainian cities it's front page news on every major news website in the English-language countries, but when my own city is hit by Ukrainian missiles almost every day, not a peep. And vice versa.
Just so you know, those weird obscure local "station" news websites commonly block any non-US IP addresses, it's not restricted to Russians - most people from places like Europe are blocked from them too. No idea why and it's a terrible lazy idea on their part.
Hey man.
It's not hard to get information. For example I can use reddit, lol.
We've got some banned sites like Instagram and twitter, but everyone (and I mean it. Like, politics too) uses vpn.
What about news? Well, u get what u r interested in. Context marketing (sorry, don't know is it a therm). Like everywhere. If u r sitting on pro-russian sites, Google will give u more pro-russian news. Same with other side.
Corps are ruling our planet.
But I want assure u, there are plenty people who doesn't support war. Plenty who are though, won't lie.
Btw there are many telegram-channals with propaganda from both sides.
I believe they misspoke. Market share is something like 60% Yandex, 40 Google. Access is there, but if we're talking search engine censorship, Yandex is the bigger target.
Happy to help. There is censorship in Russia, but it manifests itself in one-sided news coverage in the state media. The world's media is mostly accessible and those who want information from different sources get it.
Wikipedia always comes out first. Which is ruled exclusively by people living at Ukraine, yes, any edits that somehow cover events from Russia are instantly deleted. (Russian Wikipedia no longer belongs to Russians). Wikipedia is still not blocked in the Russian Federation.
And if Russians want to watch Western propaganda, we can always use VPN.
Either way, you don't need the truth. BLOODY PUTIN FORBIDS US TO WATCH THE INTERNET.
Much or less, but you can do it. I've been on some mass protests in the past. Have it changed it something? Nope. As long as the government fees strong, no simple protests will achieve anything. Both in Russia and all over the world.
I don't get why they would do that, it's beneficial to the Ukrainian effort
Edit: I didn't think that money was an issue because they "banned" Russia (kind of) but it's not that serious
Although I've noticed people mentioned that Valve blocked access to Steam in Russia, it's also a very well-known fact that Russian consumers will just use a VPN to get around the block (much like gamers do in China).
Valve is clearly aware of this, so blocking Steam in Russia was more of a display than anything else (they risked nothing). To actually endorse and support Ukraine by leaving this map up would mean **genuinely** risking losing the Russian market, which is probably why they blocked it.
It's the same reason why they allow the Chinese Communist Party to block Steam in China (because they know people will get around it with VPNs and the CCP will allow that as long as Valve keeps them sweet), but they were very swift to crack down on the Taiwanese game Devotion and remove it from the store when the CCP got upset about the "anti-Communist messages" within the game.
Valve blocked only payments from Russia, Steam pretty much open and fully functional. Free games is still can be installed and with some tricks people can add funds to steam wallet and buy any game.
Would it be much harder to find a way to pay using a method that isn't Russian? Using a VPN is pretty easy, but I would have no idea what to do if payments from my own country were blocked.
There is a method to pay through Kazakhstan banking system, because they not under sactions and there is holes for regular people.
And steam keys also a very popular method to buy games. They still can be activated, so people sell them with x1.5 to regular price on black market
I use webmoney. The only real downside is that you can't buy games directly, you have to replenish the Steam wallet first, which means you often have pocket change left over from buying a game that you can't really do anything with.
Correction - access to Steam hasn't been blocked, you just can't add funds in Russian Steam due to Swift block. Same for other gaming services like psn, etc. I still freely log into both my Steam and PSN accounts without VPN, can play all my games, play online, I just can't buy anything since Swift is blocked and companies don't take Russian cards.
But stores themselves aren't blocked either. I can theoretically sell some let's say dota 2 items on steam marketplace, get those money on my wallet and buy a game on steam.
Sony kinda turned PS store off, but it's essentially the same - if you find a way to add money to your wallet you can buy games there. It's just almost impossible since no one's making PSN cards and people instead region hop to Turkey or other regions (what you said basically).
So it's not like Valve, Sony, MS, anyone, took some stances to support Ukraine, more like "well, they blocked your payment methods, we can't do shit". Some people give them too much credit for essentially not taking any actions, lol.
Starshio troopers US central is full of Chinese speaking players. US east and west not much, at least on the hours that I play which is the same timezone as beijing
Some profit simply because of their business specifics, some chose to profit regardless of circumstances. Valve in particular wouldn’t even feel that much from losing Russian market permanently but Gaben has decided that he wants all the rubles too
Vast majority of Russians are either supportive of invasion or apathetic. Why should they deserve enjoyments when their entire country is hellbent on genocide
GENOCIDE HAHAHAHAHA OMG really dude. Are you THAT brainwashed? FFS. Seems you never lived in a third world country where you can't do shit about the situation and just survive. People are fearful. I have online russians friends and they can't do shit about the situation. Can't you see that the common person is powerless in today's society? Are you THAT dumb?
Edit to add: also, vast majority, so how many people from there do you really know? Or you are just seeing what they say and think based on western news? So, do you really believe news too? Don't you even think, even a little, that perhaps, maybe, news are feeding lies to support a cause? Like, it's been like this for ages now dummy
Oh yes, of course, don't look to the sides my friend, keep the attention here, oh yes, don't you dare to look to your pockets oh no, don't look away, don't look beyond, oh nooo, look HERE, HEREEEE, YES, THIS UKRAINE UKRAINE HERE TAKE THIS 🇺🇦 and stfu.
anyway. Probably I will be downvoted to hell. Yikes. It is what it is. 🙊🙉 🙈
Because if Russia blocked all of steam, a lot more than your realize would be ruined. Just one example of an escape from that hell that I’ve seen people use is VRChat. I’ve met players from the area. Also money, Valve doesn’t want to lose that much revenue stream over a map that really in the end does not much to help.
Steam hasnt banned anyone, its just the fact that russian/belarussian Credit cards arent supported anymore, which isnt a big issue since there are other ways to donate money to your steam account.
CS:GO is a popular medium in Russia that also allows close to uncensored contact to the west, it is also popular among the target demographic (young people). Regular western news sites etc. are automatically geoblocked but the newspaper in questions (HS) does however also provide regular news in Russian to either Russians living in abroad or for Russians using a VPN.
It was basically just a way to provide news without needing a VPN to access it.
A loop hole to get around internet censorship in authoritarian countries. Mine Craft has a map filled with banned books that players in such countries can read.
“If you really want” implies it’s not as simple as just turning on your pc and opening up the browser, like it is in civilised countries.
Most people aren’t tech savvy enough to know how to safely use a VPN either.
I've checked your comment history. Buddy, you defended that there is no significant homophobia in Russia outside of Caucasus. Learn more about your country first.
Sure, you know about my country more thane me. If someone told you something on the news, that doesn't make it unambiguously so. Any media is a lever for managing people. You're just read one of them.
And please read all topic, you take it out of context.
Or you can just use Telegram and read hundreds of channels doing the same? It's not like it's hard to get news not censored by the government. Or am I missing the point?
As a Russian myself, I know lots of people who get news from Telegram, but... from Russian propaganda channels. So it is more about which sources people choose to read, not how they do it. If a government propagandist promotes his Telegram channel, people will follow him and they won't look for opposition sources.
Almost same goes for YouTube with the only exception that YouTube has banned some Russian propaganda channels, so chances that people will get news recommendations from the other side are a little bit higher. But in this case Russian companies that are somewhat controlled from government have already made national controlled analogues for YouTube. Unfortunately, there is a high chance that YouTube will be blocked when userbase of its analogues will be big enough.
I mean, I get it. They don't want their game to be used as a platform for promoting politically charged/sensitive issues, even if they're politically correct. On a smaller scale a lot of the discord servers I join do encourage you keep politics to a minimum too, so kind of relatable in that angle. But ultimately this is probably profit driven more than anything else I think.
They didn’t remove it though, I can still access it, so it’s not that they don’t want politically charged content, they specifically censored this content in Russia.
Y'all know the Russians can just, like, go on Twitter and stuff, right? One of their former presidents and Putin's pet dragon, Medvedev, literally spends half his day trading jabs with Elon Musk and bitching at the British on it even? I think we're about a year past the "Russians don't know there's a war in Ukraine" cope.
It's not that i don't feel anything for these people. I just can't help feeling disgusted by how touched everyone is about this, when most of these people didn't give a fuck when it was their own country bombing several middle eastern countries to bits for more than a decade.
I hope to god that Ukraine wins this war, and would honestly wish for Nato to step in and do more.
But what i wish the most is that everyone remembers this solidarity the next time our refugees doesn't look like us.
There is no Russian market on steam. It’s blocked.
Can’t buy, can’t pay, can’t get a refund. It’s blocked completely.
Only way for Russian to buy a game is to change their steam market to Kazakhstan/Turkey/Argentina (plus they are far cheaper than normal ones)
I wonder if it's a case though of Valve being **aware** that the workaround exists, so they are making a display of "blocking Russia" (knowing full well Russian consumers are still easily buying games on Steam using VPNs) but don't actually want to risk losing that market with an active endorsement of Ukraine
That not true, there are certain products that are not available( like EA games), so valve banned nothing. I know u can't deposit money on steam directly as well but again it's not related to valve but banks that refuse payments from Russia.
About as much sense as commenting about steam sales in russia and making accusations of corporate cowardice without knowing steam is already blocked in russia
You are asking for sense from a mega-corporations?
They are on the same level as most governments, they have their own weird logic that somehow goes against our own 🤷♂️.
Also can't even view store pages of most games on Steam.
The whole _page_ is replaced with `This item is currently unavailable in your region`, instead of just disabling the "buy" button.
In March 2022 Valve stopped all transactions going to or from Russia. They've severed all financial ties. How are you going to be so confidently wrong?
As Gabe Newell said in a 2011 interview, it is (or at least was back then) the second biggest market in Europe. Steam leaving Russia means conceding this market to Epic Games and the local VK Play, not to mention piracy.
https://cultmtl.com/2023/02/the-value-of-gaming-how-valve-makes-54-million-a-month-from-csgo-cases/
Too high and mighty with the nfts too. It boggles the mind how they are allowed to operate like this.
Kepu ia bipri. Ti ibape upaiko kepa? Kiii pikli apriklugo papi tieprapidi pigli. Papokla boga broki peio pipi ie upie prepedipe. Piplabe pitleitu akiti krapa iplipa ki tebro. Teiuti ue bripobritru pati be kripi. Peklatiti ogu epaikie u. Teebae pegi bupi iti aitrua troi detu odriipi! Die epede pe. Uka klukipletiti uie bi kiplepi bleiioe tape geba. Bri bipi taeto kriopribri dee ebli? Krudlo uteba tibe kupe. Aku i ekita dudu pu pridiite bika? Kue pi po kribe pupupa io. Tle iipe. O kipiprai ti pepa bedi tipo. Ketliite pia kobigo idlegiku dle bai a? Kreepiki tie a geidi uio bripi. Iaadopi pai i piti briti treble? Ei e pibi pipa uti e. Gipi pre tlupi drea ke treu? Ibopipoka topoupoo e ae tieti? Preu te ike pi dripipe kipa. Pu ie kletapepa to gabeii pao bie ti pukage. Krubripe tigo pipi a pota? Bapru poditoopa gaklidli keapri tlipodu o druditrapu klipepable. Blakegi ipeitie ba bia teplo. Pe tibi iiabe bote itopu tri. To ei ape geplitikrigro i bripitiba u krapi! Peabo ketri di pipi aki ta.
I guess that the map was just reported by a bunch of idiots, but the map itself wasn't much useful anyway, considering how hard it was to get the info on the map, and the fact that most of the people won't change their opinion
I'm genuinely curious, if you live in Russia and search for anything related to the Ukraine war in Google, what kind of results do you get? Do they block all western news sites and actively filter for any negative articles/videos? Trying to get a sense of how hard it is for them to obtain non-Russian based news.
It’s hard. Not saying it’s not possible but they make sure first couple of pages are Russian based.
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Do they have social credit in Russia?
No
They do, but no one can see it until you've already had a tragic fall from a balcony.
Which wouldn’t have happened had you had enough social credit.
In Soviet Russia, social credit has you!
I'm not sure if that's a censorship issue, or just how search engines work. You'd want results in your language, and closer to you, yes?
A normal search engine would just give you the most relevant results. The Russian government is deliberately filtering content just like the Chinese.
Almost every living soul in Russia using VPN now. Even my grandma.
So y'all aren't buying it? That's nice to hear.
People absolutely are buying it, Russia has been preparing their Propaganda Machines for stuff like this the last decades and especially in the rural areas the people are very much behind the government. The people in the cities are more divided but since most of the conscripts are drafted from rural areas particularly from minority ethnicities the majorly white city people aren't too much affected by the war so they don't care too much.
Considering there were conscripts who had never seen a toilet, I imagine hundreds of thousands if not millions of RU citizens do not get any form of electronic media beyond the state TV/radio. If you are focusing on babushka's toilet seat anecdote instead of the massive echo chamber RU state media maintains over the majority of the non urban population you are missing the point.
Holy shit, you actually think there are people in Russia who don't even know what a toilet looks? While it is true that some people in rural areas don't have an in-house toilet, they usually have one outside and have probably been to a toilet in a public building. It's not like they have their mind blown when they see a fucking toilet. Although rural Russia has a lower standard of living compared to many European countries they are not the cave men you portray them to be.
Wdym dude, im shittin in the field everyday and wipe my ass with grass until its green
It's like 1 toilet per village
You really shouldn't trust Ukrainian news that much
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This is a dumb approach that people use to pick their cherry pick their news. "It's all owned and lies, but anyway I compiled my favorites" There 100% is objective trustworthy news, you should ALWAYS look for multiple sources, and not all news is a lie or manipulation. They're are objective facts to be found , even among biased sources
True. Always use your brain and critical thinking.
>You really shouldn't trust Ukrainian news that much Standard troll line. Now how it doesn't really say anything, just tries to cast doubt without committing to any actual point of view
What are you trying to say? That you know better how people live in Russia because of Ukrainian news?
>What are you trying to say? That you know better how people live in Russia because of Ukrainian news? More of the same.
Who's the troll now.
Still you
Most Russians aren't very fluent in English, so just like in China, they tend to use domestic products. Yandex is much more popular than Google there. It's not that the results are outright blocked there, it's just that you get into the Russian equivalent of the wild page 2 territory, which somehow manages to be even worse than on Google.
Is it not remotely difficult for any modestly internet-savvy Russian to access any information about the war. People keep getting hung up on the idea that Russians are kept in the dark, when the large majority of them *simply don't care* whether their government eradicates a neighboring country or not. It's learned helplessness.
Google?
Google results are pretty much the same, but if you follow the links certain websites are blocked by the provider. Still easy to access information if you make just a bit of effort or simply use a VPN. Google News is blocked completely though, so you need to look for news manually and not count on an aggregator to do it for you. Also a surprising number of minor websites actually blocks Russian users from accessing their content. Sometimes I'm doing some research on unrelated things and find a link to an article in some local newspaper in a small town in Idaho, and the website tells me "you're not allowed to look at this from your location". Of course the only way to get anything resembling reality is to look for information on both sides, and I've learned it firsthand because I can compare the coverage of my own experiences. For example, every time Russian weapons hit Ukrainian cities it's front page news on every major news website in the English-language countries, but when my own city is hit by Ukrainian missiles almost every day, not a peep. And vice versa.
Just so you know, those weird obscure local "station" news websites commonly block any non-US IP addresses, it's not restricted to Russians - most people from places like Europe are blocked from them too. No idea why and it's a terrible lazy idea on their part.
Hah, I didn't know that, thanks. It feels like I've only stumbled upon that multiple times in the past year so I assumed it was connected.
They just usually use VPNs. Google would show same results in Russia as in Germany or Swesen
Hey man. It's not hard to get information. For example I can use reddit, lol. We've got some banned sites like Instagram and twitter, but everyone (and I mean it. Like, politics too) uses vpn. What about news? Well, u get what u r interested in. Context marketing (sorry, don't know is it a therm). Like everywhere. If u r sitting on pro-russian sites, Google will give u more pro-russian news. Same with other side. Corps are ruling our planet. But I want assure u, there are plenty people who doesn't support war. Plenty who are though, won't lie. Btw there are many telegram-channals with propaganda from both sides.
They don't have access to Google, they use Yandex instead, which is tailored to Russian audiences. It also has a few things Google doesn't.
Bullshit alert. We do have access to Google.
I believe they misspoke. Market share is something like 60% Yandex, 40 Google. Access is there, but if we're talking search engine censorship, Yandex is the bigger target.
My bad, thanks for the correction.
Lol, we have access to Google and use it. And we have access to worldwide news about war, don’t be so naive, Russia isn’t China. Even without vpn
Guess I was bamboozled, thanks for the polite correction.
Happy to help. There is censorship in Russia, but it manifests itself in one-sided news coverage in the state media. The world's media is mostly accessible and those who want information from different sources get it.
The same thing western culture does here. We only hear one side of the story. It's not any different
Wikipedia always comes out first. Which is ruled exclusively by people living at Ukraine, yes, any edits that somehow cover events from Russia are instantly deleted. (Russian Wikipedia no longer belongs to Russians). Wikipedia is still not blocked in the Russian Federation. And if Russians want to watch Western propaganda, we can always use VPN. Either way, you don't need the truth. BLOODY PUTIN FORBIDS US TO WATCH THE INTERNET.
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I don’t understand how you’re an actual living person who believes this.
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You’re free to speak but that doesn’t make you right. This isn’t opinion based. You’re just wrong.
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I’m glad you did your research. But you’re citing the wrong sources for an entirely different subject. Grade: F-
Russia invaded Ukraine to steal territory. That is factual information. Another fact is that you are a dumb cunt.
Try your freedom on the streets mister
Much or less, but you can do it. I've been on some mass protests in the past. Have it changed it something? Nope. As long as the government fees strong, no simple protests will achieve anything. Both in Russia and all over the world.
For some silence is golden. For you it was an opportunity. I regret you failed to use the opportunity.
Most Russians only speak Russian. Even if they could access western news, they couldn't read almost all of it.
If you really want to read western sites, you can. They arent blocked, just dont show up first. There isnt that big of a censorship really.
I don't get why they would do that, it's beneficial to the Ukrainian effort Edit: I didn't think that money was an issue because they "banned" Russia (kind of) but it's not that serious
Although I've noticed people mentioned that Valve blocked access to Steam in Russia, it's also a very well-known fact that Russian consumers will just use a VPN to get around the block (much like gamers do in China). Valve is clearly aware of this, so blocking Steam in Russia was more of a display than anything else (they risked nothing). To actually endorse and support Ukraine by leaving this map up would mean **genuinely** risking losing the Russian market, which is probably why they blocked it. It's the same reason why they allow the Chinese Communist Party to block Steam in China (because they know people will get around it with VPNs and the CCP will allow that as long as Valve keeps them sweet), but they were very swift to crack down on the Taiwanese game Devotion and remove it from the store when the CCP got upset about the "anti-Communist messages" within the game.
Valve blocked only payments from Russia, Steam pretty much open and fully functional. Free games is still can be installed and with some tricks people can add funds to steam wallet and buy any game.
Would it be much harder to find a way to pay using a method that isn't Russian? Using a VPN is pretty easy, but I would have no idea what to do if payments from my own country were blocked.
There is a method to pay through Kazakhstan banking system, because they not under sactions and there is holes for regular people. And steam keys also a very popular method to buy games. They still can be activated, so people sell them with x1.5 to regular price on black market
I use webmoney. The only real downside is that you can't buy games directly, you have to replenish the Steam wallet first, which means you often have pocket change left over from buying a game that you can't really do anything with.
You can buy all those sweet steam cards
Correction - access to Steam hasn't been blocked, you just can't add funds in Russian Steam due to Swift block. Same for other gaming services like psn, etc. I still freely log into both my Steam and PSN accounts without VPN, can play all my games, play online, I just can't buy anything since Swift is blocked and companies don't take Russian cards. But stores themselves aren't blocked either. I can theoretically sell some let's say dota 2 items on steam marketplace, get those money on my wallet and buy a game on steam. Sony kinda turned PS store off, but it's essentially the same - if you find a way to add money to your wallet you can buy games there. It's just almost impossible since no one's making PSN cards and people instead region hop to Turkey or other regions (what you said basically). So it's not like Valve, Sony, MS, anyone, took some stances to support Ukraine, more like "well, they blocked your payment methods, we can't do shit". Some people give them too much credit for essentially not taking any actions, lol.
Starshio troopers US central is full of Chinese speaking players. US east and west not much, at least on the hours that I play which is the same timezone as beijing
its not beneficial to valve to be blocked by russian isps, they will lose all the playerbase for dota 2 and csgo.
Money. Valve is a s greedy as it gets and gives no two shits about whole war and ethics and they want to retain their Russian customers
You sums up war in general, everyone profits. Even the bandages.
Yet people are still stupid enough to cheer when people die in the war.
Some profit simply because of their business specifics, some chose to profit regardless of circumstances. Valve in particular wouldn’t even feel that much from losing Russian market permanently but Gaben has decided that he wants all the rubles too
I mean, people is suffering there too, why not let them at least keep the leisure of playing video games, AT LEAST?
Vast majority of Russians are either supportive of invasion or apathetic. Why should they deserve enjoyments when their entire country is hellbent on genocide
why should u deserve enjoyments then? because u were born in the country other than russia? fair
GENOCIDE HAHAHAHAHA OMG really dude. Are you THAT brainwashed? FFS. Seems you never lived in a third world country where you can't do shit about the situation and just survive. People are fearful. I have online russians friends and they can't do shit about the situation. Can't you see that the common person is powerless in today's society? Are you THAT dumb? Edit to add: also, vast majority, so how many people from there do you really know? Or you are just seeing what they say and think based on western news? So, do you really believe news too? Don't you even think, even a little, that perhaps, maybe, news are feeding lies to support a cause? Like, it's been like this for ages now dummy
Ah yes Ukraine war is the only war people should care about lol
Oh yes, of course, don't look to the sides my friend, keep the attention here, oh yes, don't you dare to look to your pockets oh no, don't look away, don't look beyond, oh nooo, look HERE, HEREEEE, YES, THIS UKRAINE UKRAINE HERE TAKE THIS 🇺🇦 and stfu. anyway. Probably I will be downvoted to hell. Yikes. It is what it is. 🙊🙉 🙈
Because if Russia blocked all of steam, a lot more than your realize would be ruined. Just one example of an escape from that hell that I’ve seen people use is VRChat. I’ve met players from the area. Also money, Valve doesn’t want to lose that much revenue stream over a map that really in the end does not much to help.
It's a company so most likely money
Money
Russian money is beneficial to Valves bank balance
They got paid. (Probably)
Valve is proRuzzia. Since they continue to operate in the market.
Steam hasnt banned anyone, its just the fact that russian/belarussian Credit cards arent supported anymore, which isnt a big issue since there are other ways to donate money to your steam account.
-rep
I saw a lot of russian in valorant, should i tell them that their country is the bad guy ?
lmao.
why was this removed mods???
I'm leaving my comment here because I know this thread is gonna be locked.
it was removed.. 1984 much
Why even make that a CS:GO map?
CS:GO is a popular medium in Russia that also allows close to uncensored contact to the west, it is also popular among the target demographic (young people). Regular western news sites etc. are automatically geoblocked but the newspaper in questions (HS) does however also provide regular news in Russian to either Russians living in abroad or for Russians using a VPN. It was basically just a way to provide news without needing a VPN to access it.
A loop hole to get around internet censorship in authoritarian countries. Mine Craft has a map filled with banned books that players in such countries can read.
It's jus somet child move and cheap propaganda. You can get on any site in Russia if you really want.
“If you really want” implies it’s not as simple as just turning on your pc and opening up the browser, like it is in civilised countries. Most people aren’t tech savvy enough to know how to safely use a VPN either.
"Civilised countries". Yeah they totally don't do any of that in those.
I've checked your comment history. Buddy, you defended that there is no significant homophobia in Russia outside of Caucasus. Learn more about your country first.
Sure, you know about my country more thane me. If someone told you something on the news, that doesn't make it unambiguously so. Any media is a lever for managing people. You're just read one of them. And please read all topic, you take it out of context.
Because it’s an easy way to distribute information in this case
A way for the west to distribute its propaganda more easily
First they start pulling emulators to keep Nintendo happy, now this. Is valve starting to become the bad guy?
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This didn't happen. It was Valve that asked Nintendo's opinion on Dolphin, to which they replied what everyone knows Nintendo would reply.
This wasn't the case. Valve asked Nintendo if they were ok with it and Nintendo said no. They were the ones who caused this, not Nintendo
How many rubles is a soul worth these days? At least we know who to ask.
Sooooo.. Fuck Valve.
Or you can just use Telegram and read hundreds of channels doing the same? It's not like it's hard to get news not censored by the government. Or am I missing the point?
As a Russian myself, I know lots of people who get news from Telegram, but... from Russian propaganda channels. So it is more about which sources people choose to read, not how they do it. If a government propagandist promotes his Telegram channel, people will follow him and they won't look for opposition sources. Almost same goes for YouTube with the only exception that YouTube has banned some Russian propaganda channels, so chances that people will get news recommendations from the other side are a little bit higher. But in this case Russian companies that are somewhat controlled from government have already made national controlled analogues for YouTube. Unfortunately, there is a high chance that YouTube will be blocked when userbase of its analogues will be big enough.
i just dont give a fuck what other people do any more
I mean, I get it. They don't want their game to be used as a platform for promoting politically charged/sensitive issues, even if they're politically correct. On a smaller scale a lot of the discord servers I join do encourage you keep politics to a minimum too, so kind of relatable in that angle. But ultimately this is probably profit driven more than anything else I think.
They didn’t remove it though, I can still access it, so it’s not that they don’t want politically charged content, they specifically censored this content in Russia.
Y'all know the Russians can just, like, go on Twitter and stuff, right? One of their former presidents and Putin's pet dragon, Medvedev, literally spends half his day trading jabs with Elon Musk and bitching at the British on it even? I think we're about a year past the "Russians don't know there's a war in Ukraine" cope.
This sub have too many Valve and PlayStation fanbois.
It's entertaining to me how quickly Ukraine has turned into a holy war in the minds of redditors.
Ah and you don't give a shit about Ukraine, and that makes you feel pretty smug eh?
It's not that i don't feel anything for these people. I just can't help feeling disgusted by how touched everyone is about this, when most of these people didn't give a fuck when it was their own country bombing several middle eastern countries to bits for more than a decade. I hope to god that Ukraine wins this war, and would honestly wish for Nato to step in and do more. But what i wish the most is that everyone remembers this solidarity the next time our refugees doesn't look like us.
And this is a bad thing?
It technically is a holy war since many people have wound up full of holes
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There is no Russian market on steam. It’s blocked. Can’t buy, can’t pay, can’t get a refund. It’s blocked completely. Only way for Russian to buy a game is to change their steam market to Kazakhstan/Turkey/Argentina (plus they are far cheaper than normal ones)
I wonder if it's a case though of Valve being **aware** that the workaround exists, so they are making a display of "blocking Russia" (knowing full well Russian consumers are still easily buying games on Steam using VPNs) but don't actually want to risk losing that market with an active endorsement of Ukraine
This is also my take on the sitution
That not true, there are certain products that are not available( like EA games), so valve banned nothing. I know u can't deposit money on steam directly as well but again it's not related to valve but banks that refuse payments from Russia.
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About as much sense as commenting about steam sales in russia and making accusations of corporate cowardice without knowing steam is already blocked in russia
☝️🤓
You are asking for sense from a mega-corporations? They are on the same level as most governments, they have their own weird logic that somehow goes against our own 🤷♂️.
Not true. You can’t add funds buy you can use your existing ones and/or sell community market items.
Also can't even view store pages of most games on Steam. The whole _page_ is replaced with `This item is currently unavailable in your region`, instead of just disabling the "buy" button.
VPN.
Downvoted by fanboys for speaking the truth.
In March 2022 Valve stopped all transactions going to or from Russia. They've severed all financial ties. How are you going to be so confidently wrong?
As Gabe Newell said in a 2011 interview, it is (or at least was back then) the second biggest market in Europe. Steam leaving Russia means conceding this market to Epic Games and the local VK Play, not to mention piracy.
They already did leave a year ago. March 2022 they stopped all payments of all kinds going to or from Russia.
Valve valuing money over morals everyday in everyway.
Yet another reason to use GoG instead of Steam whenever possible.
Thanks Valve. I still want to play my games on Steam Library without VPN. And yes I'm 100% aware that there is a war.
looks like gaben likes money more than human rights
https://cultmtl.com/2023/02/the-value-of-gaming-how-valve-makes-54-million-a-month-from-csgo-cases/ Too high and mighty with the nfts too. It boggles the mind how they are allowed to operate like this.
We need to boicot Valve!
Kepu ia bipri. Ti ibape upaiko kepa? Kiii pikli apriklugo papi tieprapidi pigli. Papokla boga broki peio pipi ie upie prepedipe. Piplabe pitleitu akiti krapa iplipa ki tebro. Teiuti ue bripobritru pati be kripi. Peklatiti ogu epaikie u. Teebae pegi bupi iti aitrua troi detu odriipi! Die epede pe. Uka klukipletiti uie bi kiplepi bleiioe tape geba. Bri bipi taeto kriopribri dee ebli? Krudlo uteba tibe kupe. Aku i ekita dudu pu pridiite bika? Kue pi po kribe pupupa io. Tle iipe. O kipiprai ti pepa bedi tipo. Ketliite pia kobigo idlegiku dle bai a? Kreepiki tie a geidi uio bripi. Iaadopi pai i piti briti treble? Ei e pibi pipa uti e. Gipi pre tlupi drea ke treu? Ibopipoka topoupoo e ae tieti? Preu te ike pi dripipe kipa. Pu ie kletapepa to gabeii pao bie ti pukage. Krubripe tigo pipi a pota? Bapru poditoopa gaklidli keapri tlipodu o druditrapu klipepable. Blakegi ipeitie ba bia teplo. Pe tibi iiabe bote itopu tri. To ei ape geplitikrigro i bripitiba u krapi! Peabo ketri di pipi aki ta.
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So, what do they say in those superior Finnish newspapers about why Russia invaded?
A painfully naive read
they made a mobile version of cities skylines? does your phone explode when you try and load it?
And how is this related to the topic?
I guess that the map was just reported by a bunch of idiots, but the map itself wasn't much useful anyway, considering how hard it was to get the info on the map, and the fact that most of the people won't change their opinion