kai2: When you support sanctions -- unless they are very specific and targeted -- they ALWAYS hurt regular people... innocent people. That's why the GOG stance is IMO so wrong... and the fact that even those don't seem uniformly applied just adds more reason to re-think the whole approach IMO.
For some perspective, Roman is a regular kid (young adult) in St Petersburg. He made a video on it. Notice the run on the banks and regular people are left with no way to get their money. Such a travesty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu6xUG9zoRg Is playing games really be the average Russian person's priority right now when he should be finding ways to protect their assets like redirecting his liquidity into something stable than buying new games? Seems like this board is either full of edgy 4chan teens or sheltered manchildren whose priorities would be to ensure they're able to buy games when their country is at war with another one. Truly, these people don't have their priorities straight if they was a economopolitical crisis in their countries.
Not only that, the West has been placing major sanctions on Russian elites for the past several years and that hasn't deterred Putin from his stupid decision. If Russians want to blame anyone for destabilizing their own country, they should blame their own president before reaching deep in their arsenal of whatabout-isms and criticizing historical track records as if one single country has been run perfectly without flaws. Russia is hardly far from a perfect state itself. Source: rferl.org/a/russia-sanctions-timeline/29477179.html
Say whatever you want about Western propaganda and NATO imperialism,
that doesn't change the fact that Russia needs the world more than they need Russia and their people need to be acutely reminded of that. Maybe they can finally get off their helpless butts and do something it like boycotting their elites' businesses, discreetly transferring funds to people and organizations that do have the potential to take down Putin from within like donating to political opponents, honest Russian journalism, and through other forms of civic resistance.
Y'all be strawmanning the entire West as a bunch of Russophobes when it's really the dumbest minority of populations who actually stereotype minorities for their leaders' actions. Anyone with a semblance of intelligence knows it's not the people's fault and those people who do should be punished. By fighting a culture war with these minorities and generalizing it to entire populations, you're being hypocritical.
Pro-Russian SJWs defending Russian GOG gamers are laughable. Whatever they still bought from the store before this decision will still be accessible to them and piracy will still be an option. GOG won't go bankrupt from cutting off 6% of their annual revenue. Even so, piracy will always be an option for them. I'm quite sure they're going to be fine for entertainment even if they have to resort to ROMs and emulators. Source (p72): cdprojekt.com/en/wp-content/uploads-en/2021/04/management-board-report-on-the-activities-of-the-cd-projekt-gro up-and-cdc-projekt-sa-in-2020.pdf
Surely, you don't think with the entire world condemning Russia and all these businesses pulling out that maybe you're standing on the wrong side of history?
