Valve bows to Kremlin: LGBTQ+ solitaire game [Flick Solitaire] pulled from russian Steam [cited a 2006 federal law prohibiting the "promotion of non-traditional sexualities"]

www.player.one Valve Bows to Kremlin: LGBTQ+ Solitaire Game Pulled from Russian Steam

Valve sparks outrage by removing the LGBTQ+ inclusive game Flick Solitaire from Steam in Russia, bowing to Kremlin censorship demands while Apple and Google refuse.

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134 comments

Your choice as Valve here is to either delist or not be in Russia. It is easy for me, as someone not in Russia, to cheer Valve to fight the good fight. But, it would suck if I were in Russia and suddenly lost access to my games.
- This is the most sane take I've seen. It's honestly weird how ignorant this thread is, regional censorship is not new. Australia has a habit of banning violent games. The Middle East and China have a habit of censoring all sorts of things. Many countries have their own laws of what is and isn't okay and they fluctuate all the time. My friend in Germany couldn't play Wolfenstein because any games with Nazi imagery were illegal until relatively recently.
  Literally every company that operates in those countries also censor their stuff. The only reason this article exists is because [thing but Russia] gets more clicks and outrage compared to [thing in fifty other countries]. You're free to hate Steam for it but this isn't weird or exclusive behavior. They're running a business.
  
  It's almost always wrong, and businesses should pull out of those places. I hope they pull out of my country if they pull similar shit. If you support bad values, you should be punished. And if losing their games makes people finally overthrow the magats, then that must be done
- Yeah, I don't know why it's news at all. It happens in every other country with any amount of censorship, US included.
  
  If America does this shit, they should pull out of here too
  
  By this logic since you disapprove of the actions of Valve then you should not use it if were an existing user and not start if you're not.
- But, it would suck if I were in Russia and suddenly lost access to my games.
  Another reason not to rely on steam as a central point of failure.
  
  Not a defense, but aren't a lot of the steam games at least runnable without the front end?
  Not as much as GOG obviously, but some ?
  
  Lots of indie games yes, but not so many of the AAAs
  
  Afaik no. Some games will run with steam open in offline mode without an internet connection but that's about it.
  
  All the games will run in offline mode, unless they specifically require the steam services to start, like anticheat and stuff. It's a gamedev decision, not Valve's
- I play online games since counterstrike 1.4 came out. If russians lose access to online games, it would make every online game in europe better. It sucks for them, but maybe they need their own servers so they can be toxic to themselves.
  
  People downvoting here probably don't realize how toxic Russian youth can be. They're a product of their environment and oh boy the environment is shit.

134 comments