First of all, I know Fatshark are not obliged to do anything for Russian players, because it’s not their fault, but I’m gonna share some thoughts anyway.
As far as I understand this situations, the main problem is accessibility of Amazon Web Services. Currently about 63% of AWS IPs are blocked in Russia via government censorship. So, the only solution for us right now is using VPN with server outside of Russia. And this solution has one major drawback — it often adds noticeable network lag. And since Vermintide 2 is a game where split-second decisions are often necessary, latency is incredibly important.
So, I think we need some tools that would allow us to route only traffic from V2 to AWS though proxy/VPN, but use direct connection for gameplay (i.e. connection to the host / game server without proxy). Since AWS should only be needed for operations with account (authentication, getting mission rewards, opening chests, changing gear, crafting, etc), latency is not really important for these.
Obviously I don’t know all the details, but implementation of proxy support should be somewhat realistic unlike moving away from AWS or dealing with Russian government.
PS: If upcoming dedicated servers are gonna be hosted in AWS too, my whole post is invalid though.
Sadly, it may be a wishful thinking. So far they’ve been very stubborn about unblocking stuff. On contrary, it may be a matter of principle for the agency that issue blocklists. If they unblock something it would look like they’ve made a mistake and that won’t do.
Anyway. I do hope blocklists would go away someday, but that day may be very distant, so we need to do what we can ourselves.
Well, it’s a shady story tbh. Initially they blocked only stuff like torrent-trackers, pornsites, gambling sites, sites that are involved in drug-dealing, etc. And while I don’t approve any censorship, these blocks were at least understandable. But a couple of weeks ago they made an attempt to block Telegram messenger because apparently Telegram refused to give backdoor to our government. And since they use AWS as main hosting, a lot of AWS IPs got blocked to get Telegram. And a lot of services got crippled in process. Gaming was especially unlucky — I’ve seen a lot of reports of games being inaccessible (at least partially) due problems with AWS.
I don’t know what we can do except vpn or try to deal with local providers about solve the problem of access to the game. This situation is really idiotic, i don’t know which sort of brain deseasse has people from our government, but it’s so…huh.