Publishers Are Losing Billions By Pulling Their Games Out Of Russia

thegamer.com:

Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the shelling of urban centers, a lot of games publishers protested by pulling out of Russia entirely. Take-Two, Ubisoft, Microsoft, Epic Games, Nintendo, EA, Activision, and CD Projekt have all halted new games sales in the country. For Microsoft, this includes shutting down Game Pass in the country, while Nintendo took down the Switch eShop. CD Projekt also stopped selling games on GOG, its digital sales platform. Steam is still selling Russian games, but it's not paying Russian developers for those sales in order to abide by international sanctions.

Despite the cost, the world is turning its back on Russia. And the move certainly is costly. GamesIndustry.biz, using numbers provided by IDG Consulting and Newzoo, estimates that all these games publishers are losing out on a market valued at $3.4 billion.

Related: Here Are Ukrainian Video Game Studios You Can Support Right Now

As pretty much everywhere these days, most of Russia's game sales come in the form of mobile titles. GI.biz reported Russia's mobile market is valued at $1.4 billion, while its PC market is runner-up at $1.2 billion. Console sales are third at $864 million, of which most games are sold digitally and account for $549 million.

Russia's ally Belarus is also cut off from sales, but its total video game market is a mere $101 million.

Compared to the entire European games market, which is estimated to be $51.5 billion, Russia accounts for 6% of all spending, but 12% of all spending on PC.

It's difficult to attribute just how much each publisher is giving up by pulling out of Russia, but CD Projekt told GI.biz that it believes Russia accounts for 5.4% of its revenue over the past 12 months. That’s a lot,