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Apparently US sanctions on Crimea have caused Blizzard to restrict access to Starcraft, World of Warcraft and Diablo for people living in Crimea. It's unclear whether this affects Hearthstone and HotS players as well.
A number of members from the Crimea complained that they had been blocked from accessing online games American Blizzard Entertainment. According to the web, the reason for this was the US sanctions against Russia. One user posted a letter Blizzard Entertainment – Developer Diablo, World of Warcraft, Starcraft and other games. It states that “the company is required to take such measures to comply with legal restrictions on trade with certain countries / regions.” These limitations do not allow Blizzard gamers to return the money or transfer the game to other accounts. Read the rest here
The above article states that people are attempting work-arounds (all those years of tunneling into Korea are paying off...).
Apparently people receive the following email:
“You are receiving this email because the connection with the current trade restrictions against the Crimean region, we are forced to suspend access to your Battle.net account . All current subscription will be canceled. We sincerely regret that you raised these circumstances, and if the situation changes, we will be happy to do everything in our power to regain access to your account “. Source.
The sanctions are applied by a large number of companies, including Apple, Google, etc. There is no date specified when the sanctions will be lifted.
I feel this is a great example of political collateral damage. I cannot fathom a single way in which blocking gamers from accessing games they've purchased is going to help attain any geopolitical goals.
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It's unsourced, no citations, and isn't posted on any kind of reputable website. Can we get confirmation?
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assuming this is true, punishing the people for putin's landgrab is not going to deter him from his shenanigans in the slightest. i if anything, this is probably gonna draw more hate towards the us from the russians who are the ones being sanctioned without reason as far as they are concerned. i know there's no easy way to punish politicians themselves, but taking it out on citizens is neither fair nor efficient in what the us/eu are trying to achieve.
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The Moscow Times now ran this story, so I would guess it's legitimate.
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Appears to be legitimate now, it's trickling out. Carry on.
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United Kingdom13774 Posts
The dependence of modern games on having some form of easily disrupted online presence troubles me more than the fact that sanctions are the reason for that disruption.
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Yeah, the whole principle behind b.net and, more importantly, Steam is that you own the games but don't have to own physical copies. Yet, it's much less likely to lose access to a physical copy like this.
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"We sincerely regret that you raised these circumstances." Just how biased is Blizzard now? What a bad joke.
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On April 08 2015 06:01 Ghanburighan wrote: Yeah, the whole principle behind b.net and, more importantly, Steam is that you own the games but don't have to own physical copies. Yet, it's much less likely to lose access to a physical copy like this.
No, the principle is that you own a license to play the games that is subject to the terms and conditions, one of which is that your license can be revoked at any time. In exchange, you can play the game from anywhere only so long as you utilize their services. Should the services become unavailable, your license is terminated.
If you had a physical copy of any of these games, it would not be any different as they all rely on the Battle.net service to be played at all, if the service is unavailable, they cannot be played.
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Oh now we can actually see how absurd the sanctions are. They are punishing all people living in Crimea. How can anyone support bullshit like that?
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On April 08 2015 06:50 Maenander wrote: Oh now we can actually see how absurd the sanctions are. They are punishing all people living in Crimea. How can anyone support bullshit like that?
Tell me: how does one sanction ONLY the leadership of a certain country or area?
It's not possible because the leaders speak for the entire country whether the citizens like it or not, and it's on those citizens to change the government or leave. That's the way geopolitics works.
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On April 08 2015 07:08 deth2munkies wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 06:50 Maenander wrote: Oh now we can actually see how absurd the sanctions are. They are punishing all people living in Crimea. How can anyone support bullshit like that? Tell me: how does one sanction ONLY the leadership of a certain country or area? It's not possible because the leaders speak for the entire country whether the citizens like it or not, and it's on those citizens to change the government or leave. That's the way geopolitics works. And here I thought the US view was that Russia occupies Crimea and the Crimean people had not much of a choice ... don't destroy the narrative!
Decades and decades of sanctions against Cuba have really helped with the regime change btw, sanctions work so well...
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On April 08 2015 07:21 Maenander wrote:Show nested quote +On April 08 2015 07:08 deth2munkies wrote:On April 08 2015 06:50 Maenander wrote: Oh now we can actually see how absurd the sanctions are. They are punishing all people living in Crimea. How can anyone support bullshit like that? Tell me: how does one sanction ONLY the leadership of a certain country or area? It's not possible because the leaders speak for the entire country whether the citizens like it or not, and it's on those citizens to change the government or leave. That's the way geopolitics works. And here I thought the US view was that Russia occupies Crimea and the Crimean people had not much of a choice ... don't destroy the narrative! Decades and decades of sanctions against Cuba have really helped with the regime change btw, sanctions work so well... I'm not arguing that they work, I'm just arguing that by definition, sanctions must not only effect the leadership, but the general populace as well.
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I think the people of Crimea are going to have bigger problems than not being able to play some games over the coming years.
Still sucks for them though.
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On April 08 2015 08:40 jello_biafra wrote: I think the people of Crimea are going to have bigger problems than not being able to play some games over the coming years.
thats all there is to say;)
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Northern Ireland20688 Posts
Surprised nobody has used the terrible 'Crimea river' pun yet...
Do Blizzard even have to do this? I know they must if called upon, but would the State Departments be busting down their door and requesting this, or did Blizzard just do this to be on the safe side?
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More like they don't really make enough money in that area. For example, if the local bank they work with to get payments gets sanctioned, it's a pain to get a new one.
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On April 08 2015 06:24 Jj_82 wrote: "We sincerely regret that you raised these circumstances." Just how biased is Blizzard now? What a bad joke.
oh the new trend of wussy "apologies".
Just when you thought "I'm so sorry you felt that way" for "I'm sorry for doing that" was bad enough. I mean.. It's not like Blizzard had to admit some mistake (eg like Sony being hacked) and feel bad while doing so.
On April 08 2015 09:37 Wombat_NI wrote: Surprised nobody has used the terrible 'Crimea river' pun yet...
Do Blizzard even have to do this? I know they must if called upon, but would the State Departments be busting down their door and requesting this, or did Blizzard just do this to be on the safe side?
I never heard it before and didn't get it until I googled it. Made me laugh hahaha + Show Spoiler +
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Iranians have been dealing with this for years, and from a geopolitical perspective, it seems to be working. It sucks for Crimeans, but what can they do but start demanding political change from their new regime?
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Sanctions, helping terrible governments to stay in power since... 1945?
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