Japanese gaming company Konami has confirmed that it will stop supporting and closing servers for its key online games in Russia and Belarus, with access blocked for users from these countries starting on June 15, 2026.
Japanese gaming company Konami has confirmed that it will stop supporting and closing servers for its key online games in Russia and Belarus, with access blocked for users from these countries starting on June 15, 2026.
Four popular projects of the publisher were immediately restricted: the football simulator eFootball, the online components of the action game Metal Gear Solid V, as well as two digital card games — Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links.
In particular, users from these regions have begun reporting the appearance of official server outage notifications directly within the game clients. Such a warning appeared on the screens of players in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. A similar situation occurred with the football simulator eFootball and the card projects of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series.
According to the developers, regional support and online services will cease at 6:00 (local time for card games) and 9:00 (for eFootball and MGS V). The restrictions will apply to players on all supported platforms — from consoles to mobile devices. In its appeals, Konami refrained from explaining in detail the reasons for this step.
Analysts and players attribute this decision to increased sanctions pressure, the inability to fully conduct transactions within games (due to the blocking of Google Play, App Store and banking systems), as well as the strict requirements of local Russian legislation regarding the localization of users' personal data. Since monetization in these regions has become virtually impossible, maintaining servers has turned out to be financially impractical for the Japanese company.
