In brief: Amazon has become the latest company to respond to the Ukraine invasion through the medium of video games by halting the Russian localization of its New World MMORPG.
Vice President of Amazon Games, Christoph Hartmann, confirmed the move to TechRadar Gaming. “We were looking into localizing New World for Russia, and we stopped that,” he said.
New World saw just over 28,000 peak concurrent Steam players over the last 24 hours. At it’s all-time peak, that number stood at over 913,000.
Companies across the world have been reacting to the invasion of Ukraine in different ways. EA Sports this week said it would be removing all Russian international teams and clubs from NHL 22 and FIFA 22.
Additionally, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister who is also the minister of digital transformation, has urged Microsoft and Sony to temporarily pull out of Russian markets and block Russian accounts. “If you support human values, you should [leave] the Russian market,” he said.
You are definitely aware of what is happening in Ukraine right now. Russia declare war not for Ukraine but for all civilized world. If you support human values, you should live the Russian market! pic.twitter.com/tnQr13BsSv
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) March 2, 2022
Fedorov suggested that the gaming giants turning their backs on Russia would “motivate the citizens of Russia to proactively stop the disgraceful military aggression.”
Yesterday brought news that Doom co-creator John Romero had created his first level for Doom 2 since the game launched almost 30 years ago as a way of raising funds to help the people of Ukraine. You can buy it for five euros, and all proceeds go to humanitarian causes.
The tech industry is also seeing a major backlash against the invading country. Intel and AMD have both now officially confirmed they are suspending all shipments to Russia and Belarus, and Apple has stopped its product sales and limited its services. We’ve also heard that Airbnb is suspending its operations in Russia and Belarus.
Russia, meanwhile, has said it will stop selling rocket engines to the US.