Ukraine’s latest effort to pressure Russia into calling off the invasion of its country involves recruiting the biggest gaming companies to its cause.
On Wednesday, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov took to Twitter to urge Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation to stop serving Russian users. “If you support human values, you should [leave] the Russian market,” he wrote.
In the same tweet, Fedorov included a letter directed to all game development companies and esports platforms,urging them to temporarily ban Russian and Belarusian users and cancel any events in Russia and Belarus, which has partnered with the Kremlin on the invasion.
In a separate tweet, Fedorov then asked several game development companies—including Electronic Arts, Riot Games, and Ubisoft—to close their offices in Russia. “Right now Russian troops are bombing Ukrainian cities and killing Ukrainians. Please help us stop this,” he wrote.
We’ve reached out to Microsoft, Sony, and the game development companies for comment, and we’ll update the story if we hear back.
Fedorov made the plea days after he called on Apple to stop selling products and services in Russia in a bid to sow public unrest and motivate the Russian people to protest their government's invasion of Ukraine.
It’s unclear if Fedorov’s request had any effect on Apple. But on Tuesday, the company announced it had begun halting product sales in Russia, citing the Ukrainian conflict. Apple has also stopped exports to the country, meaning third-party dealers will need to find unofficial channels to source the company’s products.
Fedorov is also urging Apple and Google to pull Russia’s access to their app stores. Thus far, it seems Apple has stopped short of blocking the iOS App Store in Russia.
At the same time, Fedorov is calling on enterprise tech vendors SAP and Oracle to pause all business in Russia. This includes Oracle halting all software updates to company products in Russia until the conflict is resolved.