Valve has blocked Flick Solitaire on the Russian segment of Steam. The company fulfilled the demand/requirement set down by Roskomnadzor, which found LGBT-themed decks in the card game. The British edition of the International Business Times drew attention to this by rolling out a story called “Valve bowed to the Kremlin.”

It is reported that in its demand to block Flick Solitaire, the regulator referred to the 2006 federal law on the prohibition of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.”

Valve also notified the developers of Flick Games why the game was no longer available to users from the Russian Federation, which nevertheless did not prevent the founder of the studio, Jan Masters, from criticizing Valve for wanting to follow the laws of the country in which the company does business.

Masters demanded that Valve either openly support the rainbow movement* always and in all countries, or officially admit that it is not going to do this.

This is not the first time that Valve has complied with the requirements of the Russian regulator. According to PC Gamer, since 2022, the company has removed more than 260 products from the Russian Steam according to the instructions of Roskomnadzor.

Popular Russian gaming channel GSTV had the following to say on the issue:

“According to the version of the hysterical woman from Kotaku, Gabe** is a KGB agent working with Roskomnadzor to cut out games with gayness from our region. Tolerant whiners demand that Steam fight against any manifestations of homophobia, because that’s exactly what a responsible businessman should do. These subspecies believe that the opinion of 1 percent of mentally ill citizens can somehow influence a multinational company to abandon the market of 100 million healthy customers.”

It is important to note that Steam enjoys overwhelming popularity in Russia, where it has become the dominant digital distribution platform for PC gaming, largely due to the region’s strong PC gaming culture, limited console penetration, and Steam’s early support for regional pricing and ruble payments. Russia consistently ranks among Steam’s top traffic sources by downloads and active users, with a vast library of localized games and a thriving community of players across genres like CS2, Dota 2, and PUBG. Despite occasional payment hurdles due to geopolitical sanctions, Russian users continue to rely heavily on Steam through various workarounds, and the platform remains a central hub for gaming, social interaction, and even digital trade in the country.m is an extremely popular service in Russia.

*— recognized as an extremist organization and banned in the territory of the Russian Federation.

**— Gabe Newell the founder and owner of Steam