"To do nothing is to support Microsoft's actions”
An interview with one of the Microsoft game developers behind an open letter criticizing the company’s Israeli military ties
This past spring, a group of developers at Microsoft-owned Arkane Studios in France reached a tipping point over their parent company’s reported links to the Israeli government's bombardment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
They felt restless to speak out and begun discussing writing an open letter to management.
“We felt concerned about the ongoing genocide and Microsoft’s responsibilities in it,” one of the workers, who currently works at Arkane, told me over email.
(The worker asked to speak anonymously over fears of retaliation. In this story, I’ll refer to them as Manon, a pseudonym.)
The Arkane employees’ plan to write the open letter was postponed for weeks due to major layoffs at Microsoft—including in its gaming divisions—in early July.
“Our concern was that the open letter would be muted by the layoffs news,” Manon told Game File. “Since then, it has been very difficult to find the correct timing, knowing that the situation in Gaza was deteriorating rapidly.”
They published the letter last week, addressing it to the heads of Arkane, and upper management at Bethesda, Microsoft gaming and the heads of the “overall Microsoft group.” The authors, including Manon, are members of the French union Le Syndicat des Travailleureuses du Jeu Vidéo, or STJV— specifically the union’s Arkane Lyon section (more on what that means below; they don’t disclose how many Arkane workers are in the section).
The letter states that "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.”
It echoes the demands of a Microsoft worker protest group called No Azure for Apartheid, and presses Microsoft to terminate “all ongoing or future contract with Israeli Occupation Forces,” disclose company ties to the Israeli military, call for an “immediate and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and to protect “pro-Palestinian speech and the safety of allies employe[e]s.”
Manon said they gave their leadership “a few hours” of advance notice before posting the letter online. More than a week later, Manon said, they have yet to receive a reply.
“No one has responded directly to our open letter, neither Microsoft, nor Bethesda, nor Arkane leadership,” Manon said. “When the subject was brought up on [the] studio chat channel, Arkane leadership invited everyone to be considerate when expressing their opinion, to maintain a peaceful exchange on the subject. They did not address the letter itself and remained neutral.”
Microsoft has faced scrutiny and pressure all year—in the press, from protesting employees, and from shareholders—regarding the contracted use of its AI and Azure cloud tech by the Israeli military over the course of an ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip that has killed an estimated 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. (The Israeli Defense Forces’ assault followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed nearly 1,200 Israelis, per media reports, and took more than 250 people hostage).
In May, following employee protests, Microsoft said an investigation "found no evidence to date that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza." (More recently, the company said it is conducting a new investigation over an August report in The Guardian that Microsoft’s cloud tech was being used to surveil Palestinians in preparation for attacks.)
“The news about Gaza is harrowing,” Manon told me over email, after I asked how, given their activism, they felt working at a Microsoft-owned company this year.
“I think which company I'm working for doesn't affect my primary reaction to it,” they said. “However, knowing that Microsoft has a responsibility in it, brings up a deep feeling of incompatibility between what I put my daily energy into and the actual use of my work.”
“It confirms that this is a company prioritizing profit over humanist and moral values, despite internal communications.”
Arkane has more than 150 employees and is currently developing a video game about Marvel’s vampire-hunting super-hero Blade.
It is part of Microsoft but relatively remote. It’s a fairly new member of the tech giant. Arkane’s direct corporate parent, the vaunted gaming label Bethesda/ZeniMax, was purchased by Microsoft in 2021.
The studio is based in Lyon, France, far from the company’s Redmond, Washington headquarters, where protesting workers from other Microsoft divisions have interrupted speeches of Microsoft executives and where, earlier this week, protestors occupied part of Microsoft’s campus.
In fact, Arkane’s distance from Redmond is part of what spurred the letter, Manon told me.
Seeing the protests of employees in Washington “contributed to a global sentiment that we were not the only ones in Microsoft willing to speak,” Manon said. “We couldn't really interrupt speeches… from where we are, anyway. We only have access to online Q&A, which are heavily moderated. So we had to work with our own tools.”
(Manon stressed that where they responded to my questions with “we,” they had consulted with their union colleagues to answer my questions.)
By the time those Microsoft worker protests had happened, the STJV-unionized employees at Arkane had already begun planning the letter. They’d taken notice of call from the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement for consumers to boycott Microsoft’s gaming products. Manon said it was “a bit stressful and worrying for some workers.”
The BDS call-out underscored to Manon and their co-workers that, remote as they were, their division was a key part of Microsoft’s business.
BDS states that Microsoft’s gaming division, which includes Xbox, Activision’s Call of Duty franchise, King’s Candy Crush games and Blizzard’s World of Warcraft makes “up a considerable portion of Microsoft’s profit,” and therefore makes it a key part of Microsoft’s ongoing financial success.
Microsoft doesn’t disclose the profitability of its gaming team but recently told investors that the game division increased its revenue by $2 billion in the 12 months ending June 2025, compared to the year before. Microsoft gaming is part of the company’s More Personal Computing segment, which posted $12.0 billion in operating income (profit, essentially) for that 12-month stretch. (By comparison, Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment, which includes Azure, reported much bigger revenue growth of $18.8 billion over the same period of time; and annual operating income of $37.8 billion).
Manon said it would be wrong to consider Microsoft’s gaming team as siloed off or detached from the rest of the company’s finances.
“We are contributing to funding other branches of Microsoft, including the ones working with IDF,” they said. “I think saying we don't have a part in it is self-delusion.”
They continued:
“On a larger scale, the video game industry has been normalizing fascist ideas for decades, collaborating with far right, the police, the army, and displaying various heroic fascist figures, some more obvious than others.
“It's each and everyone's responsibility to act against this. As Arkane employees, we are doing our part in this, at our scale and with our tools. After all, we are creating these games, and we should take part in such decision-making. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. “
The open letter was the STJV Arkane worker’s opening gambit, forgoing any action to appeal to management internally first. “We had previous experiences in which we tried communicating with Microsoft with no success,” Manon said.
The union section behind the letter, STJV, is not the main workers union at Arkane. That is a group called Printemps écologique, which has a work council that speaks for studio employees and that had, for example, issued a statement over layoffs in 2024, on behalf of the studio workforce.
A game studio can attain an official “section” of a French union such as STJV by having at least two workers join, though it is customary for them to not disclose how many workers do so. That means that the Arkane open letter, from a studio of well over 100 people, could at minimum have been written by just two workers.
Manon declined to say how many people are in the Arkane STJV section but dismissed criticism that the letter might only represent a handful of people’s views:
“I think those who would deny our legitimacy would do it with or without knowing our numbers. They are looking for excuses to avoid the very real subject of an ongoing genocide.
“I can say that, yes, we do not speak for all the studio, we speak for STJV's section. We received both positive and negative feedback from non-members working at the studio. Speaking out for those members and non-members who share our opinion is part of a union's role. These persons wouldn't be able to express this without our support, in fear of consequences on their careers. To do nothing is to support Microsoft's actions.”
Among the negative reactions the STJV worker group received internally, Manon said, was anxiety over how the letter would be received by company bosses: “For the last years, the announcement of layoffs at Microsoft has become tedious,” they said. “Recently, Zenimax has been hit strongly, and some may feel we're playing with fire by releasing this letter (which of course is not our intention).”
Other reactions, Manon said, have been more supportive. “We received positive feedback from colleagues as well as game workers outside of Arkane. And support from other STJV sections.”
One of the open letter’s demands is that Microsoft not punish workers who speak out on this issue.
“Getting fired is not our main concern,” Manon explained. “French law protects the freedom of speech for unions in the workplace. However, we are cautious and on the watch for more insidious repercussions or discriminations on our members.”
And would they consider simply leaving the studio?
“No, we don't plan on leaving Arkane,” Manon said, speaking for their co-writers as well before sharing their own perspective.
“I don't believe that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, especially under capitalism. I find it more effective to stay and fight for better working conditions for everyone. Every win somewhere is opening the path to bigger wins with greater range.”
Item 2: Krafton strikes back
PUBG and Subnautica publisher Krafton has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Charlie Cleveland, Max McGuire and Ted Gill, the longtime leaders of Subnautica studio Unknown Worlds, who Krafton fired earlier this summer.
After their firing, Cleveland, McGuire and Gill, as “Fortis Advisors,” sued Krafton over breach of contract, saying the publisher had fired them to avoid paying out their share of a potential $250 million performance-based bonus, were Subnautica 2 to have successfully launched later this year.
Krafton has denied this, saying the game wasn’t ready, even for an early access release in 2025, and that the three principals had neglected the project.
The publisher’s lawsuit alleges the men “abandoned not only the Subnautica universe but also their responsibilities to the Company.” Cleveland, it notes, publicly and privately communicated that he was focusing on starting up a movie studio and was developing a Christmas comedy since last year.
A key allegation in the Krafton suit was previewed in a Krafton filing in the Fortis case last week (item 2 of a recent Game File). The publisher alleges that Cleveland, McGuire and Gill allegedly downloaded company data in breach of their contract. In the new Krafton complaint, the publisher describes a “trifecta of mischief,” in which the three men are said to have downloaded more than 100,000 files consisting of emails and documents related to the studio’s games, just prior to their firing. [Read the full redacted complaint, as uploaded by Krafton]
Krafton is asking the court for financial damages, for its files back and for its Unknown World studio to be awarded “all rights, titles and interests in any intellectual property developed by any Key Employee during his employment with the company.” Such work, the publisher not so subtly states, includes “all movie scripts” and movie footage.”
A rep for Cleveland, McGuire and Gill did not reply to a request for comment by press time.
Item 3: In brief…
💰 Sony has raised the price of all models of PlayStation 5 in the U.S. by $50, with the base system now costing $550 and the PS5 Pro at $750.
The company cited “a challenging economic environment.”
Price drops were common enough in prior console generations to be assumed inevitable. But this generation, which began during a pandemic and is now persisting through steep Trump administration tariffs on the Asian countries where consoles are manufactured, has seen multiple console price hikes.
PS5 prices had already increased in other regions this year. In May, Microsoft raised the price of its Xbox consoles by as much as $100. This month, Nintendo raised the price of models of the original Switch by as much as $50.
👀 Microsoft announced a release date for the Xbox ROG Ally, the first officially Xbox-branded gaming portable: October 16. But it has still not announced a price.
😮 Silksong, the sidescrolling action/exploration game from Australian indie Team Cherry is set for a September 4 release on consoles and PC.
Silksong is arguably the most anticipated game of the last several years. Sorry, GTA VI, but not as many people were spamming your game title in the live-chats for every online promotional showcase.
The game’s lengthy development cycle was a remarkably joyful experience for its tiny team, Bloomberg reports.
Good on Manon. I wish we could all somehow stand up against both genocide and capitalism.
I think it’s great to stand up and speak out, but a lot of this feels unserious to me. The caginess regarding how many people the letter speakers for, and especially the unwillingness to quit over it, with the hand waving to “under capitalism”. It just doesn’t feel that serious if someone is waiting for the complete overthrow of an economic system before living in accordance with their principles.
The line about game makers being culpable in glorifying fascism seemed weird, too. Art is art. Is Rockstar culpable in 30K a year of US firearm deaths because GTA treats American crime like a playground? IDK man…