Amazon’s block on Russia suspends shipments, Prime Video streaming, and New World MMO purchases

Amazon is suspending shipments to Russia and Belarus as a result of ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the corporate introduced in a weblog publish (through Bloomberg). It’s additionally barring entry to Amazon Prime Video in Russia.

“Given the continuing scenario in Russia and Ukraine, we’ve taken extra actions within the area,” Amazon says within the publish. “We’ve suspended cargo of retail merchandise to prospects primarily based in Russia and Belarus.”

Amazon can also be halting any new orders of the open-world MMO New World, the one recreation title it sells in Russia. A slew of different recreation firms, like EA Video games, CD Projekt Crimson, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and Epic Video games, have suspended gross sales within the nation as nicely. On Tuesday, Amazon’s cloud computing platform, Amazon Net Providers, stopped accepting new signups in Russia and Belarus.

Along with Amazon, different main gamers like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Netflix, and PayPal have stopped doing enterprise with Russia. Even when Amazon did preserve its providers on-line in Russia and Belarus, customers would have a tough time making purchases — Visa and Mastercard shut down operations within the nation, making any Russian-issued Mastercard or Visa playing cards ineffective for funds exterior the nation. To get round this main impediment, Russian banks might begin issuing playing cards that use China’s UnionPay system, which can enable Russians to make some abroad purchases.