It’s been almost 3 years since Russia invaded Ukraine, and Google is one of the companies that has cooperated with the U.S. government in imposing sanctions on Russia. Google has issued a notice to developers in Russia, announcing that starting December 26, 2024, Google will indefinitely suspend the accounts of all local developers and stop all purchases involving Russian accounts.
Subscriptions to programs, games, or services previously sold by Russian developers will not be affected, and Google says it will pay developers the final settlement on January 15, 2025. These new measures will profoundly impact Russian developers, who can no longer make money through Google Play. Hence, the published app or game can only be a purely free version in the future, as any purchases and subscriptions involved will be canceled.
Google also mentioned in the announcement that since December 26, it has refused to allow users to purchase paid programs provided by Russian developers or to make in-app purchases, subscriptions, and pay for subscription renewals through Google Play.
While Google didn’t explicitly explain why it was implementing the measures, we can guess it because earlier, Google stated that the sanctions imposed by the banking system in Russia made it nearly impossible for Google to find a reliable way to pay local developers. In fact, Google stopped providing paid app downloads and updates to Russian users as early as May 2022, about 3 months after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Without the Google Play Store as a channel, Russian developers who rely on selling apps and games for their livelihood may need to turn to a Russian app store, such as VK’s RuStore. The local government is said to have ordered that all smartphones sold in the local area in the future will need to be forced to install RuStore to replace the Google Play Store feature.
