"No Games for Genocide has urged the games industry and players to boycott Microsoft and Xbox because of the US tech giant's ties to Israel's Defence Force and the technology it has provided during Israel's war on Gaza, which a United Nations commission last year declared a genocide."
"This decision felt to right to us – the game we're making is about making people feel powerful, and acting, and not giving into cynicism and hopelessness, says Meghna Jayanth, narrative designer on All Will Rise."
"As the Guardian reported last August, the Israeli spy service had been using Microsoft's Azure cloud to carry out mass surveillance on Palestinian civilians. (Microsoft responded by terminating the Israeli military's access to this service, though the IDF remains a client and still uses other Microsoft services.)"
Video game funding has become scarce following the pandemic boom, particularly affecting indie developers. Speculative Agency, developers of All Will Rise, a deck-building game about activists fighting oligarchy, received Microsoft funding through a developer acceleration programme. Upon learning about No Games for Genocide—a collective protesting industry ties to Israeli military operations in Gaza—the team decided to return the investment. Microsoft faces boycott campaigns due to providing cloud services and technology to Israel's Defence Force during the Gaza conflict, which the UN declared genocide. The company terminated the IDF's Azure access but maintains other military relationships. Speculative Agency's decision reflects alignment between their game's themes of activism and resistance with their ethical stance against supporting entities enabling conflict.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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