Afaik no. Some games will run with steam open in offline mode without an internet connection but that’s about it.

It’s called “complying with the law”.

I think that is the wrong approach. North Korea is the result of what you advocate for, a people who do not know the possibility of other lifestyles. The complete isolation of a country is similar to locking up a child in a basement: It corrodes the mind and prevents escape for something better.

This isn’t to say that Russia, Israel, nor North Korea shouldn’t be impacted by their harmful characters. Instead, they should be treated like post-WW2 Japan, where outsiders force reforms. In Japan’s case, that was the dismantling of mega-corporation zaibatsu, ensuring democratic voting, removing previous leadership, reconstruction programs, and so forth.

It isn’t much different from tending a garden, where you both help and harm to ensure that the best plants get ahead of weeds.

These comments are shit. Who said that you should comply with Russia’s laws???

Your choice as Valve here is to either delist or not be in Russia. It is easy for me, as someone not in Russia, to cheer Valve to fight the good fight. But, it would suck if I were in Russia and suddenly lost access to my games.

The alternative is to stop doing business in places where laws are being used to restrict the games available.

Don’t get me wrong, fuck the russian government and the horse they rode in on, but unless you have a defend-able reason that russia should be singled out in this context your argument is emotional rhetoric and little else.

You could perhaps narrow that down to a subset of applicable laws, but i’d lay good money that any group/type of laws you pick are not go only contain russia and still be able to be considered a reasonable argument.

I fed up to see the discourse about steam being the best thing since sliced bread. Its a shitty company, pro censure, anti lgbt, anti owning game, with another oligarch ceo . I exclusively use GoG now

Of course, none of that is possible against a nuclear power, because it first relies on unconditional surrender. I also don’t think any leaders in the world have to political will to do that, either.

IMO, the key points for handling a nuclear power is two or three things:

1: Identify potential replacement of leadership, who would be open to negotiation. They just need to see value in having dealings with other powers. It could be a gift, political legitimacy, or the threat of being removed from the census.

2: Collaborate with “outside” powers to cushion the repercussions of removing the target country’s inconvenient leadership. For example, offering aid to civilians, moving military forces around to increase or ease tension, establishing narratives, ect.

3: The actual removal of the existing leadership. Trump sent a special forces team into North Korea. That was stupid, but a carefully planned operation with a genuine goal, such as eliminating the Kim family, might work out. This assumes that China is participating, as the northern border is probably less secure against intrusion. At this point, China probably doesn’t want North Korea around, because Kim could point a missile at someplace unwanted, and unprompted.

I am not saying it to be easy, it is more about leaders having enough guts and foresight to consider such measures. Putin’s Russia certainly does some of this, considering the shadow fleets, hacking, and influencer operations. Krasnov is an example of removing leadership without even involving blood, by influencing politics from afar.

There’s a thin red line that tie both Putin’s oligarchs and Trump’s oligarchs: “wokeness” is a concept fabricated by the latter but is completely compliant with Russian’s 2006 federal law. They can’t formalized that freedom of people doesn’t matter, they need to make-up a blurry concept of “tradition” and a vague concept of something that may corrupt the aforementioned joke (“traditional values”: the one between the traditional human ape rape cave and matrimonial rites after human ape pack raided another pack and took their females)

I play online games since counterstrike 1.4 came out. If russians lose access to online games, it would make every online game in europe better. It sucks for them, but maybe they need their own servers so they can be toxic to themselves.

What’s the alternative? They have to obey the law, right? What should they have done? How is this “bowing to Kremlin” as if they’re kneeling, waiting to suck their dick or something.

Genuinely curious about these questions.

So, human rights stuff aside, how/why the fuck do we need a genderised solitaire?

Yes, those things can be done, and they’re good ideas. One key difference between the U.S. and North Korea thing is that Russia can, or at least is believed to be able to, use a nuclear response anywhere in the world. North Korea couldn’t threaten the U.S. with nuclear reprisal. But, yes, removing the entrenched and uncompromising leader is the first step, and that is much harder against a nuclear power.

I wonder if the same people who say Steam should pull out of Russia would agree that Steam should also pull out from the US. I mean, that’s what should happen given the basis of the arguments being used, right?

I wonder if the same people who say Steam should pull out of Russia would agree that Steam should also pull out from the US. I mean, that’s what should happen given the basis of the arguments being used, right?