Russia is legalizing Piracy

[Dulfite]

1) Not every Russian is going to knowingly pirate. Most gamers don't pirate because of one or more reasons: they don't know how, they don't want viruses, they are scared of legal actions, or they have moral reasons to not do so. The percentage of gamers going to pirate because Russian legalized it won't do a lot compared to point 2.

2) Russians have a WHOLE lot more to be worried about right now than playing video games, purchased or pirated. Their savings, gone. Their economy, gone. It will take their country decades to recover, maybe even longer, it may not ever get back to what it once was. Russia is going back to a second world nation. There is a growing global mentality to just stick it to the Russians for continuing to allow and enable themselves to have leaders that do terrible things to other nations and their own people. These mindsets won't suddenly go away, even if Putin were to apologize, withdraw, and pay for all damages, tens of millions, probably hundreds of millions of people now have a permanent mistrust and dislike of Russia now and would be totally fine with everything going up in price somewhat just to stick it to them and their forefathers for letting their nation get to this point. Dictators don't just rise to power randomly, they are enabled by the people, and the people are ultimately responsible for the actions of their leaders. If they really didn't want him in power, they vastly outnumber the government and military, and I'd imagine most Russian soldiers would join their fathers, mothers, and siblings protesting rather than shoot their loved ones in a civil war.

3) I'd rather developers and other industries lose money, have to cut back on employees, and for nations to increase unemployment and poverty numbers than millions die in a massive war. Hopefully, enough Russians will get fed up with Putin and depose him and we can start the long process of going back to normal, but until they do, we have to just keep squeezing. The sanctions aren't meant to deter Putin, the man is crazy, you can't deter a crazy person. They are meant to incite a Russian revolution so we don't have to wage an actual war and lose even more lives. Russian soldiers will be a lot more inclined to shoot non-Baltic/Ukrainians than they have demonstrated against Ukrainians, they will be even less so inclined to shoot actual Russian citizens.