8 votes

Russian ‘Loop Hero’ devs tell players to pirate their game if they can’t find a way to buy it legitimately because of sanctions

5 comments

  1. cfabbro
    Link

    In a VK post yesterday, Four Quarters said that it told players to torrent the game after players started offering the developer donations, and that it didn’t do anything special “because there is nothing wrong with torrents.”

    “We are very grateful for your support, but the truth is that everything is fine with us. Send this support to your family and friends at this difficult time,” Four Quarters said, according to a Google translation of the post.

    Four Quarters has also taken a substantial risk of clearly saying in a Feb. 24 post “we are against war.” The Russian government has since cracked down on all forms of public dissent, including even referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a war as opposed to the government-sanctioned term “special military operation.”

    2 votes
  2. [4]
    knocklessmonster
    Link
    What's interesting is there are Russian-developed games still on sale. I'm not sure how this works with the sanctions, do the publishers get all the money? Do they sock it away to distribute...

    What's interesting is there are Russian-developed games still on sale. I'm not sure how this works with the sanctions, do the publishers get all the money? Do they sock it away to distribute later? Lazy Bear Games and Four Quarters are only two examples, but I frankly don't know of any more.

    1 vote
    1. [3]
      cfabbro
      Link Parent
      From PCMag: p.s. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_Russia#Russian_game_developers

      From PCMag:

      Game publishers and developers located in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine can no longer receive payments from Steam.

      Confirmation of the change comes via video game programmer Vadym, who is located in Ukraine and received an email from Steam detailing the change. The email explains that "due to the current environment, we are unable to send bank payments to Belarus, Russia and Ukraine."

      Existing banking details registered with a Steam account have been deactivated for anyone located in these three countries. The email goes on to state that bank information can be "corrected," but Valve won't be making any outstanding balance payments out of cycle, meaning waiting an extra month to get paid even if a new account can be linked.

      It's unclear why Ukraine is included in this list, but one explanation was offered by Twitter user Dark in response to Vadym's tweet, suggesting, "I don't think this was a political move and more they literally can't keep up with the currency worth changes for those areas."

      Whatever the case, anyone relying on Steam as their main source of income within these countries now has a huge problem to overcome. An alternative bank account will need to be setup before the next payment cycle, which in the case of Russia may be impossible due to all the sanctions imposed on the country. For developers in Ukraine, you'd hope Valve would be working to come up with a solution for them. Meanwhile, PayPal just made it easier and cheaper to send money to Ukraine.

      p.s. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_in_Russia#Russian_game_developers

      1 vote
      1. [2]
        knocklessmonster
        Link Parent
        That makes sense, and I guess the publisher would just get their cut of whatever? What would be the move to support a Russian dev if you'd pirated their game and wanted to buy it later, wait for...

        That makes sense, and I guess the publisher would just get their cut of whatever? What would be the move to support a Russian dev if you'd pirated their game and wanted to buy it later, wait for the conflict/sactions/regime to end?

        Also I can't help but think that list is incomplete, since the two indies I mentioned aren't even on it. But, anybody can start a studio and make/publish a game so it's also impossible to keep updated. To be clear, I didn't mean "I don't know of any more Russian studios" as a pejorative statement, they were just the two I knew of whose games i can still buy, in case that was taken negatively.

        2 votes
        1. cfabbro
          (edited )
          Link Parent
          At the moment I don't think it's entirely clear how you could support Russian devs. Donating to them or paying for their games via cryptocurrencies would probably still work if they set that up,...

          At the moment I don't think it's entirely clear how you could support Russian devs. Donating to them or paying for their games via cryptocurrencies would probably still work if they set that up, but apparently some countries are now even working to cut that off as well (e.g. Japan). So waiting until the war ends and the sanctions are lifted may end up being the only way, since even Western Union has suspended operations in Russia and Belarus.

          I didn't mean "I don't know of any more Russian studios" as a pejorative statement

          No worries. I didn't assume you meant it that way. I just provided the wikipedia link since I was curious too so looked it up, and thought others might be interested in seeing it as well. And yeah, it's clearly far from complete, but at least it's something to go off.