Technology giant Apple and video game developer Valve have joined the ranks of US companies that have severed their ties with Crimea in compliance with the American sanctions following Russia’s annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine last spring, according to Moscow-based magazine the East-West Digital News (EWDN).
Earlier, payment operators Visa, MasterCard and PayPal ditched their business in the region.
Apple has notified Crimea-domiciled firms they can no longer develop iOS applications for iPads and iPhones, which makes sales of such apps illegal, an EWDN article says.
Crimean developers believe, however, that they can bypass the ban by re-registering at a different location so that the system would be entered from a non-Crimean IP address. At present, entry from a Crimean IP results in an error message.
Valve is going to block online games purchases originating from Crimea, the article says.
The two high-tech companies’ pullout from Crimea was preceded on January 23 by that of PayPal, which told Crimean users their accounts were deactivated.
Late in December, Visa and MasterCard stopped servicing banking operations in Crimea, saying they would no longer issue or service payment cards in the region. By that time more than 30 banks were doing business in the peninsula.
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