70% of Russian Gamers Are Pirates Following Western Publisher Exodus

According to what I would hear in some of my old TF2 lobbies, this number is down from 100%.

I mean, it's always been like that here. It's a really poor country, most people don't have money to play games. Regional prices make it a bit easier, but after russian money stopped being usable internationally, most people returned to piracy

The other 30% have yet to understand how to pirate games.

I guess what will happen very soon is that there will be some super cheap subscription based Steam like service with clean and safe pirated games. Just like there are Russian Netfix alternatives, where you pay like $2 per month and get access to streaming and downloading all possible films and series from all over the world.

And once that happens, there will be no going back. The war will end, the sanctions will be lifted, but Russian gamers will never pay for games ever again.

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I can just imagine these companies that pulled out seeing that they lose a money to piracy there since there's no legal methods to access new western content - when places like Steam stopped accepting Russian bank cards - and then use that as the reason piracy is killing everything.

Sorry, we had to close up shop because we weren't selling our product in another country and they had no other option but to be dirty pirates. It's their fault and not our fault they had no legal way to pay us for our product.

In absolute numbers they will only be a drop compared to Chinese pirates, trust me.

Smartphone games are being just rushed by russians too. All these garbage p2w sinks are becoming really popular with bored russian upper class. The vacation to europe is cancelled might as well drop 2000$ to bully some people in this casual game to feel better about myself sort of vibes. Nasty.

That's lower than I would have thought.