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.
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.
I’ts more like 100% of people are pirates in Russia. But close enought =)
That’s lower than I would have thought.
The other 30% are the COD players currently missing somewhere in Ukraine