Microsoft and EA have both joined the many businesses that are suspending sales of goods and withdrawing from the Russian market, in response to the despicable invasion of Ukraine and war being waged within Europe.
Microsoft is suspending all new sales of Microsoft products and services in Russia. That means no Office, no Game Pass, no Surface tablet sales, and so on. Part of Microsoft’s actions are being defined by sanctions being imposed by the United States, European Union and the United Kingdom, and so they’re also stopping “many aspects of our business” to comply with those sanctions. Of course, Microsoft’s business is almost impossibly broad, dealing with servers, data, processing through their cloud services.
They also highlight that they are working to try and protect Ukraine’s cybersecurity, working with Ukrainian officials to defend against digital threats from Russia.
By contrast, the actions of games publishers are minimal, but that isn’t stopping some companies from pulling their games from the Russian and Belorussian markets. EA is the latest to do this, following on from CD Projekt Red’s move earlier this week. EA is pulling sales of games and content, including virtual currencies, and will no longer allow for purchases to be made through the Origin or EA storefronts. In lockstep with sporting bodies, they have also pulled Russian teams from FIFA and NFL.
— Electronic Arts (@EA) March 5, 2022
All of this will lend further weight to the wide-ranging economic sanctions and business withdrawals from the countries over the war being waged and humanitarian crisis that Russia is inflicting upon Ukraine and the world. Many of the sanctions will impact Russian and Belorussian citizens harshly, but is sadly one of the only ways that the rest of the world has of exerting extreme pressure on the regimes in charge of the two countries.
