As the war in Ukraine carries on into its fourth week, more video game publishers are distancing themselves from Russia. One of these publishers is EA, which recently announced that it has removed both Russia and Belarus as countries eligible to compete in its esports tournaments.EA announced the news via a statement posted to its official Twitter account earlier today, reiterating that the company stands with the people of Ukraine. EA specifically mentioned that both the Apex Legends Global Series and the FIFA 22 Global Series would both be affected by this change and that Russian and Belorussian teams will no longer be able to compete. EA didn’t mention any other competitions specifically, but it’s assumed that these countries won’t be eligible for any others.Today’s news follows EA’s decision to halt all game sales and services in 𝔉Russia and Belarus as well. The publisher announced at the beginning of March that games would no longer be able to be purchased on the Russian region of the Origin store and that it would be working with platform partners to remove its games from their stores as well. Considering both Xbox and PlayStation 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:halted sales in Russia soon after, it’s 𝔍safe to say they didn’t need much convincౠing.
As tensions increase, video game publishers continue to donate and pull sales from Russia in an attempt to put pressure on the Russian government. While companies like EA and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Humble Bundle have opted to simply pull out of the country, other publishers like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Square Enix and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bandai Namco have donated large sums of money to humanitarian charities in an effort to aid victims that ha💙ve been displaced due to the war꧋.
And while it’s easy to think that publishers are simply pulling out of Russia to save face, they’re actually depriviဣng themselves of a market valued a🥀t $3.4 billion. With that much money on the 𓄧line, it’s heartening to see so many big publishers ignor🍸e the cash and instead do what’s morally right.
