Supporting Ukraine as part of the gaming industry
We’ve all heard of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the severe financial and technological sanctions that have been going on as a result of it. Big Tech companies like, Apple, Google, PayPal, Tik Tok, Facebook and Twitter have stopped their business in Russia and even restricted access to misinformation and the spread of fake news. Other big players like Warner Bros, Disney, Sony, BBC and Netflix also pulled out from Russia in protest. With all this going on, we’re naturally curious as to how this is affecting the gaming industry.
The video game world has revolted against Russia in an effort to support Ukraine and Ukraine-lead gaming companies. This effort is already having a significant impact on Russia’s economy as according to Statista, Russia’s gaming market was worth an estimated $2.3 billion in 2021.
Big players like CD Projekt Red (creator of The Witcher 3 game), has donated approximately £181,000 (1millionzł) to the Polska Akcja Humanitarna, a humanitarian organisation based in Poland. 11 Bit Studios also announced that it will donate 520K from the This War of Mine sales to the Red Cross in Ukraine. The gaming industry went on to halt its sales in Russia and Belarus. On 4th March, Microsoft froze all product sales in Russia and, Brad Smith, its President, claimed that the country’s “cyber attacks against civilians violate the Geneva Convention”.
"Just as the world's governments came together in 1949 to adopt the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians in times of war, we need a Digital Geneva Convention that will commit governments to implement the norms that have been developed to protect civilians on the internet in times of peace," Smith said.
Since governments and government officials are not protecting the internet and the right to fair and true information, Facebook intervened by censoring Russian media labelling it as “false information.” According to Reuters, the state communications regulator said that Facebook had ignored its demands to lift restrictions on four Russian media outlets on its platform - RIA news agency, the Defence Ministry's Zvezda TV, and websites gazeta.ru and lenta.ru.
Meta's head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said in a statement on Twitter: "Yesterday, Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labelling of content posted to Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations. We refused. As a result, they have announced they will be restricting the use of our services." Since there are no laws against the spread of misinformation and fake news over social media, it is up to the BigTech giants to shoulder the responsibility of these incidents especially in a post-Haugen era. This of course is not the first time that Facebook and Twitter banned leaders from their platforms. The infamous Capitol Riot resulted in the shutting down of Donald Trump’s personal socials which will stay banned till at least January 2023. The only way that companies like Meta are managing to keep governments at bay is by fining them. In December 2021, Meta issued a fine of 2 billion roubles ($24 million) for a repeat offense of “trying to delete content.”
In light of all this, we have created a €1,000 relocation package for any Ukrainian’s that relocate to Malta as Zarzilla employees. If you would like to refer an Ukranian friend to Zarzilla, please visit our careers page / LinkedIn page. As a pioneer of social games, we feel like we should support this effort.
Other things we can do to support Ukraine are:
1. Find an official charity to donate funds to
2. Book accommodation on bookings.com or Airbnb in Ukraine to donate directly to residents
3. Find a local charity near you that is donating essential supplies to Ukrainian charities
4. Make sure that any information you share over social media can be trusted. Visit this page for some guidelines.