Way to go, Putin! Make sure to piss off every freakin' child in your country! No, they won't rebel openly or come out on the streets. They'll just pirate the crap out of it and probably force gay marriages everywhere "because they can".
The only disturbing thing about this affair is that I now have the mental picture of pussy riot promoting an EA game. And that
really is a picture of a disturbed world...
About this decision (which is as pointed out above incredibly lenient since they could have instead banned it or asked for EA to edit the game to allow the release at all)...
It's not like it's
impopular censorship in a repressive way. It's embraced by the population as a respect of ancestral values.
The vast majority of Russians are in fact -as much as I hate generalizations- having incredibly conservative social norms, and support wholeheartedly that homosexuality and related stuff is expected to be unacceptable social behavior and should be hidden from children.
That, and that the "West" isn't as popular there as you may think...
Western groups exercising any pressure on any social matter is guaranteed to have the reverse-effect.
(Some groups tried to send children coloring books there promoting same-sex couples... for children. The popular outcry wasn't pretty, and as a matter of fact LGBT became even more unacceptable socially after the Soichi campaigns).
In essence, calling Russians "homophobic people" if you prefer to put it this way is true.
Russians and other eastern cultures are very different than the US, where game makers can be lynched if they dared to localize a game that included breeding marriage but not same-sex marriage.
That's just how it is.
Maybe they need a LGBT rating on the games that need it, so I know what games not to buy.
Adding "LGBT Themes" to the ERSB/PEGI rating? I think it already exists as "Sexuality Themes" in fact... Correct me if I'm wrong.
Needless to say, some activists (the supporters of "if parents educate their children in the way they intend to, they will be invariably racists/sexists/homophobes/bigots and the only way for this to be helped is to forcibly shove down their throats our own education in their games and coloring books".. methods ironically not unlike churches' methods)
are not happy with this and want the mere mention/warning/notice of it be removed from ratings.
In my opinion, people must after all monitor the content their children are exposed to, and educate them the way they wish to.
Labels like "Violence", "Sexuality Themes", and even "Fear", are important.