In absolute numbers they will only be a drop compared to Chinese pirates, trust me.
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.
From the exorbitant numbers of Russians playing DotA and CS:GO I would assume there is a significant part who enjoys playing online games.
And while, sure, there are numerous examples of alternative networks / cracked servers etc., If you want to participate in “real” community of one of these games, you’ll have to use an official client.
The official online community of a multiplayer game. E.g. there are numerous private WoW servers, but the biggest and most relevant community plays on the official servers.
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 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
