The road towards a games industry that doesn’t support genocide is long, but there are steps you can take right now to get there faster.
There is an ongoing call from BDS to boycott Xbox products, with Microsoft a priority target of the movement. The tech giant is currently providing the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that help it in its ongoing genocide against Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip.
So what can you do?
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The quickest and easiest first step you can take is cancelling your Xbox Game Pass subscription. Game Pass is a massive priority for Xbox, especially as it moves away from console and software sales, so this is somewhere we can hit the company quickly and hard.
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Stop playing key Microsoft-owned games like Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Call of Duty. All of these games provide regular revenue through microtransactions and DLC, so if you already own these games the best thing you can do aside from not playing them is to cut your financial support.
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If you don’t own an Xbox, or already don’t have a Game Pass subscription or play any of these titles, encourage your friends to move away from the platform. Spread the word as much as you can, Microsoft is a massive company, and the more of us that refuse to financially support it, the clearer the message is - BDS has a proven track record of finding success against the tech company, and it can do so again.
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If you’re a game developer, consider removing your game from Xbox’s storefront. It’s a difficult step to take given the current state of the industry, but you wouldn’t be alone in doing so - the devs behind Tenderfoot Tactics did so explicitly because of the call from BDS to boycott Microsoft - and it would send a strong message to Microsoft.