Introduction
This letter is addressed to our direction at Arkane Studios, as well as the entities above, being the heads of Zenimax, Microsoft Gaming and the overall Microsoft group. It follows the call to Boycott Xbox products issued by BDS on April 10th, 2025, as well as the IOF Off Azure! Petition, and want to cast light on how this situation could affect our reputation and work, and ask Microsoft to take the appropriate measure to solve this issue.
The Genocide on Gaza and BDS
BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) is a Palestinian led movement launched in 2005 to support the rights of Palestinians to live a normal life, and to be entitled to the same rights as anyone else.
Those rights have been denied for decades by the oppression, occupation and colonization of the Israeli regime. Moreover, during the last nineteen months, this colonization openly became a genocide. As of the writing of this letter, more than 60 000 people were recorded killed, at least 74% of which were civilians. The real number is likely much higher. 217 Journalists died according to the International Federation of Journalists, making it the deadliest conflict for journalists in the 21st century. While the palestinians are starving, the Israeli regime has been denying any humanitarian help to the Gazans for months now, trying to get control over it and how it would be distributed, against all international laws. Overall, Israeli policies and actions have been violating repetitively the international laws and treaties, promoting torture, violence, deportation and destruction.
In an attempt to fight back, the BDS movement has been, for years, issuing campaigns trying to focus the public attention to pressure government and companies to stop collaborating with the Israeli government. Thanks to their international network, those call to boycott have proven massive, and made companies yield multiple times. Even us, at Microsoft, have already been subject to a previous boycott in 2020, which proved successful and led to the withdrawal of Microsoft from AnyVision, an Israeli tech company specialized in facial recognition algorithm, which has been used to secretly keep Palestinians under surveillance.
Microsoft’s Xbox Boycott
On April 10th, 2025, BDS announced a new boycott campaign, targeting the Xbox gaming products, both hardware and software.
They chose to do so to cast light on how the Israeli military has been using Microsoft services to help out on its genocidal assault on Palestinian, as it’s been revealed by the Associated Press. Microsoft has continued, and reinforced, their collaboration with the Israeli military in the last years, providing both cloud services through their Azure service, as well as AI systems to accelerate and automate their crimes, which, as an example, have been revealed to be used to help define bombing targets. In a post on their blog, even Microsoft has been stating that “[…] Microsoft does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices.” For all those reasons, and a lot more, BDS chose to call for a massive boycott over Microsoft product, as they ask for Microsoft to stop supporting the Israeli military in their destruction of Palestine.
Support of IOF Off Azure Petition
In addition to that boycott, since May 2024, more than two thousand workers at Microsoft studios have signed the “No Azure for Apartheid” petition, demanding Microsoft to cut all their ties with the Israeli Army, as well as asking to have a third-party independent audit of our contract, services and product to make sure they are not involved in any human right violation, be it in Gaza, or elsewhere. But Microsoft have been turning a blind eye to demands from its own team. Even worst, multiple persons, trying to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza and Microsoft implication in it have been terminated.
Microsoft has a responsibility toward its employees, as we have one toward the company. As stated in the company’s commitment to human rights, and regularly used in the company talk points, “Microsoft is committed to protecting fundamental rights”. But so far, Microsoft has failed both its teams & its customers by being actively complicit of the invasion and war crimes happening in Gaza. If those « core values » are more then just a talking points to sell more products, it is now more than due time for Microsoft to commit to them.
We Demand that Microsoft takes their responsabilities and put an end to this.
Arkane Studios’ STJV section joins BDS and the No Azure for Apartheid in their demands for Microsoft to stop supporting the Israeli regime. We think that Microsoft has no place being accomplice of a genocide, and as Microsoft employees, we don’t want to be part of this sinister project for Gaza. Moreover, we think it’s our responsibility, as tech workers, to raise the alarm, and to ensure that our technologies are used to make the voices of the oppressed heard, and not facilitate their demise.
Finally, in a more direct manner, we think this could very well affect our life directly, by reducing the audience for our games, thus directly compromising the viability of Xbox Games, and, in the long run, our very own jobs.
In order to ensure the future of the Palestinian society, we join No Azure for Apartheid in their demands:
- Termination of all ongoing or future contract with Israeli Occupation Forces.
- Disclosing all ties to the Israeli military, as well as conducting a transparent, independent and public audit of Microsoft technologies, contracts, services and investments to make sure they are not used to violate the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, and Microsoft’s own Human Rights Statement, in Palestine or anywhere else.
- Calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
- Uphold free speech and ensure the protection of pro-Palestinian speech and the safety of allies employes, as well as any actions, fundraising initiatives on internal company platforms.