EA and CD Projekt stop selling their games in Russia and Belarus; Sony's Gran Turismo 7 was reportedly missing from PlayStation's Russian site on launch day
Joe Skrebels / IGN :
Context & Ripple Effects
The moves follow [[a:976524|Ukraine’s vice prime minister urging major game companies to restrict Russian and Belarusian accounts]] and Microsoft’s suspension of new Russian sales. EA and CD Projekt’s decisions bring game publishers into a widening commercial response, while Gran Turismo 7’s reported absence suggests PlayStation availability was already being constrained.
First-order effects
- EA and CD Projekt immediately stop selling games in Russia and Belarus, cutting off new purchases in both markets.
- PlayStation’s Russian storefront reportedly lacks Gran Turismo 7 at launch, limiting local access to a major Sony release.
Second-order effects
- Activision Blizzard and Epic Games subsequently suspend Russian game sales, with Activision Blizzard also pausing microtransactions, extending the restriction from new releases to recurring game spending.
- Sony’s later shutdown of PlayStation hardware, software, and store sales in Russia turns a title-level availability issue into a platform-wide sales halt.
Third-order effects
- The sequence establishes a cross-industry withdrawal pattern in which publishers and platform operators act in parallel, leaving Russian and Belarusian players with fewer legal routes to buy games and add-on content.
- If such coordinated restrictions persist, platform storefront access becomes a central lever alongside publisher distribution decisions, concentrating market-control choices with the largest ecosystem operators.
The trend: Gaming companies are moving from individual product decisions toward coordinated platform-and-publisher restrictions on sales and digital commerce in Russia and Belarus.