- cross-posted to:
- ghazi
- cross-posted to:
- ghazi
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/25027030
In a show of solidarity with the Palestinian-led BDS movement, indie label Ice Water Games has removed one of its projects, open-world tactics RPG Tenderfoot Tactics, from the Xbox store.
Feels like likes and prayers.
Pulling off a game doesn’t really change anything.
As like any military force would even care the slightest a random developer stopped their game.
You either don’t understand BDS or you are not intentionally being obtuse.
you missed the Hopes Others Will Do The Same part.
they’re pulling their game as part of the larger BDS boycott. the point is to put pressure on complicit companies (in this case microsoft) for them to stop working with israel
the IDF won’t care, but if enough devs pull their games, and if enough people stop using xbox products & services, microsoft will care.
I have a lot of issues with the BDS boycotts having no actionable end states but… there are a lot of reasons to not want to give any business to microsoft at all at this point (borderline weekly layoffs at this point) and… their market share sure ain’t what it used to be.
wdym by actionable end state?
Open ended boycotts don’t work. People MIGHT boycott until they see nothing changing and give up and companies are under no incentive to change anything because it won’t make a difference. It is just a storm to be weathered.
Whereas a boycott with an actionable end state gives the company something to change if they don’t want to try to outlast the outrage, as it were.
Its why the traditional protest call and response is “What do we want?” “X!” “When do we want it?” “Now!”. It immediately makes it clear what will make the angry people go away.
For the BDS boycotts? Microsoft is sort of “Break these major contracts in ways that will make every single potential business partner wary going forward”. The Disney boycott, from what I can gather, is basically “tell gal gadot et all to fuck off”. Which… agreed. But you can also just look at the ongoing lawsuits from the last time they fired a chud for why there will be no public statement and the best we can hope for is to silently stop hiring zionists.
Which is my problem. Most of the BDS boycotts are effectively “burn down your entire company and then we’ll give you money again”. Which… yeah. I still try to support them to some degree (most of what I have settled on is “I’ll grab what I want later so that I don’t contribute to the big numbers on launch”) but there is no end and it is just going to fade away as more and more people decide they want their shiny.
And, for what it is worth, I think at least some of the folk behind these boycotts understands that. The MS boycott discussion was particularly good about stuff like “If you can’t stop using Teams of Office, consider changing to this business plan that is cheaper and turns off copilot”. Which speaks to “We know you aren’t going to drastically change your life but you were probably going to do this so you might as well do it and claim it is related to human rights”
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