On Tuesday, Tenderfoot Tactics developer Ice Water Games removed the open-world RPG from the Xbox digital storefront as a way of showing support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement after the organizers added Microsoft to its list of boycotted targets two weeks ago.
“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 studio said in a statement posted to Bluesky by Tenderfoot Tactics designer badru. “We hope that the broader community will join in the pressure campaign and fight for an end to occupation and apartheid in Palestine and across the world.”
Tenderfoot Tactics launched on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch on Feb. 21, 2024. The original Steam release from 2020 currently holds a “very positive” rating.
Microsoft provides Azure cloud and AI services to the Israeli government that the BDS movement claims are “central to accelerating Israel’s genocide of 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip.”
During a July 2024 presentation at the “IT for IDF” conference, Colonel Racheli Dembinsky of the Israeli Defense Forces praised the, “very significant operational effectiveness” the military’s partnerships with cloud companies gave them in Gaza while featuring logos for Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud in her slides. Leaked documents reported on by The Guardian in January 2025 indicate Microsoft deepened its ties with Israel following the attacks of October 7, 2023 by providing Israel with computing and storage services as well as agreeing to a $10 million deal for thousands of hours of technical support.
Ice Water Games is the first video game studio to receive significant attention for publicly supporting the BDS movement’s recent boycott. Other tiered suggestions made by the organization for consumers to show solidarity include canceling Xbox Game Pass subscriptions, boycotting flagship Microsoft franchises Candy Crush, Minecraft, and Call of Duty, and finally boycotting all Xbox-branded consoles, accessories, and games published by Microsoft-owned publishing labels.
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