Arkane employees demand Microsoft sever ties with Israeli military: 'We don’t want to be part of this sinister project for Gaza'

Members of the French videogame union STJV at Arkane Lyon, currently developing Marvel's Blade, have published an open letter calling on Microsoft to end its relationship with the Israeli military and conduct "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."

Microsoft has faced rising criticism in recent months over its entanglements with the Israeli military and its ongoing assault on Gaza, which is now estimated to have caused nearly 62,000 deaths as of August 12, 2025, many of them children. The onslaught began in October 2023 following the Hamas attack on Israel in which the group killed nearly 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.

Microsoft employees disrupted company events (and were subsequently fired) to criticize the company's work with the IDF; art rock legend Brian Eno, creator of the famous Windows 95 startup sound, issued his own call to sever ties in May. In July, a group of more than 60 Microsoft shareholders rejected the company's claim that it had investigated itself and found no wrongdoing, and called for an in-depth report into the company's human rights due diligence [HRDD].

The Arkane letter, addressed to studio leadership as well as "the heads of Zenimax, Microsoft Gaming and the overall Microsoft group," references both the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement's call for a boycott of Xbox products, and the No Azure for Apartheid petition that has been signed by more than 2,000 Microsoft employees. Regarding the latter, Microsoft has been "turning a blind eye to demands from its own team," the letter says, and that multiple employees "trying to raise awareness of the situation in Gaza and Microsoft's implication in it have been terminated."

Much like the shareholders demanding a report into Microsoft's HRDD procedures, the Arkane letter doesn't present Microsoft's support of the Israeli military as merely a moral issue, but also a practical one.

"Arkane Studios’ STJV section joins BDS and the No Azure for Apartheid in their demands for Microsoft to stop supporting the Israeli regime," the letter states. "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."

The letter calls for a termination of all current and future contracts with the Israeli military, an independent and public audit of all Microsoft technologies and services used by the Israeli miliitary, an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and a commitment to "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."

This, as far as I know, is the first studio-attributed call for Microsoft to sever ties with the Israeli military, although the letter notes it comes specifically from Arkane's "STJV section," which affords protections that prior individual protesters didn't have. French labor laws include rights and protections for workers not offered in many other countries, and like other trade unions in France, SJTV isn't shy about flexing its muscles.

Of course, this is a much bigger ask than, say, calling for a repeal to return-to-office mandates, but it also reflects a growing shift in mood: The world has been horrifically slow to recognize the ongoing atrocities in Gaza, but calls for a ceasefire from Western nations are increasing, and as reported by CNN, Israel's planned military takeover of Gaza City has been condemned by pretty much everyone except the US.

A recent report on Microsoft's dealings with the Israeli military alleged that the company provides a customized subset of Azure to store data from intercepted telecommunications in Gaza and The West Bank, amounting to millions of text messages and full phone conversations. Sources told investigators that the data has been used to blackmail and jail Palestinians in the West Bank, and even justify killings by Israeli military forces after the fact; Microsoft said in its public report on the matter that it "does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices ... nor do we have visibility to the IMOD’s government cloud operations, which are supported through contracts with cloud providers other than Microsoft."

I've reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update if I receive a reply.