Large foreign game developers and publishers began to abandon Russian when localizing new projects. The newspaper writes about it vedomosti.
“In Bethesda’s space action RPG Starfield, set to launch in the fall of 2023, Russian disappeared from the list of supported languages in mid-April,” the article states.
In April, it was noted that not only the American Bethesda, but also Sega from Japan refused to support Russian voiceovers and subtitles in upcoming games.
The Japanese game company has removed the Russian language from the Total War Warhammer 3 add-on, almost a week before its release on April 13.
In the spring of 2022, most major publishers have officially left the Russian market and removed the ability to purchase their games for accounts from Russia. These included Bethesda, Sega, EA, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, CD Projekt.
The restrictions were also brought by Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, which acted as the publishers of the projects for the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5 and Switch game consoles respectively.
formerly Sony closed the page with the game Horizon Forbidden West: Burning Shores on the Russian digital store PS Store, as well as refunded players who managed to pre-order the project. Still in the project was recorded Full localization to Russian.