Rabat — Indie game label Ice Water Games has pulled its project Tenderfoot Tactics from the Xbox store, citing support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which added Microsoft’s Xbox to its priority boycott list earlier in April.
“We hope that Microsoft will listen to the voices of their workers and customers and stop all business with the criminal Israeli military, which we have watched conduct an open genocide in Gaza over the last 18 months,” the label stated via social media.
On April 7, BDS designated Microsoft a priority target, calling it “perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid regime, and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza.”
The movement has accused Microsoft of deep integration with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) and prison system — pointing to the company’s Azure cloud and AI services, which are used by the IOF and are integral to the technological machinery driving Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.
“After 34 years of direct complicity with Israel’s military, the Israeli army now relies heavily on Microsoft to meet the technological needs of its genocide and apartheid regime,” BDS declared in a statement.
Calling on global consumers to boycott Microsoft’s gaming products, BDS laid out different levels of action — from canceling Xbox subscriptions, boycotting flagship titles such as Call of Duty, Minecraft, and Candy Crush, to boycotting all of the company’s products.
Microsoft’s addition to the BDS priority list came in the wake of the firing of Moroccan engineer Ibtihal Aboussad, who confronted company executives about its involvement in Israeli atrocities during a live presentation at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters.
“Mustafa, shame on you,” Aboussad told Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “You claim to care about using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty thousand people have died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region.”
In February, the Associated Press released an investigation exposing how US tech firms have been aiding Israel in accelerating its kill-chain capabilities in Gaza and Lebanon. The findings revealed that Microsoft and OpenAI technologies have become increasingly embedded in Israel’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinains since October 2023.
At least 50,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 113,000 injured since the start of Israel’s genocide on Gaza almost 19 months ago. These numbers are conservative estimates based on health facility records, while thousands remain buried under rubble or have been obliterated beyond recognition by Israel’s weapons.
