In a report yesterday from Ryan Grim at Drop Site News, Microsoft has been named as a “priority target” by the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement as part the ongoing effort to pressure companies to end their support for Israel. This decision comes after news that Microsoft’s AI and cloud services have been heavily used as part of the ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
BDS specifically asks:
- Cancel your Xbox Game Pass subscription
- Boycott Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Call of Duty – flagship videogame franchises owned by Microsoft.
- Boycott all Microsoft Gaming products, including Xbox-branded consoles, headsets, accessories, and all games published by Microsoft–owned labels (such as Xbox Game Studios, Activision, Bethesda, and Blizzard).
Anyone who already owns an Xbox is asked to, ideally, not play on it, but failing that, avoiding buying any more games or spending money on in-game items works too. More information regarding the boycott can be found on the BDS website.
Speaking personally, I’d encourage everyone partake in the boycott. While the BDS website points to a broader boycott of Microsoft services and products as a whole, removing all traces of Microsoft from our lives is understandably a tall order given how pervasive the company’s reach is. This is why targeting their games business is worth focusing on. Games are a luxury. We do not need an Xbox, nor Game Pass, nor any Microsoft produced games. As a means of showing solidarity with Palestine, a boycott against a company actively collaborating with a genocidal state is an easy one to clear.
(And before anyone tries to cry in the defense of the developers who work under Microsoft’s ownership and how this could “hurt them,” consider, as Kaile Hultner of No Escape points out, what happened to Hi-Fi Rush and Tango Gameworks despite that game’s massive success.)
