Australian indie studio House House has confirmed that its acclaimed cooperative puzzle adventure Big Walk will skip Xbox platforms entirely, joining a pro-Palestinian boycott targeting Microsoft over its military contracts and cloud technology deployment in Israel.
House House Keeps Big Walk Off Xbox Amid BDS Campaign
Big Walk has earned widespread critical praise since its August 4 release, securing a 91 rating on Metacritic and selling over one million copies across PC, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2 in its first six days. Yet Microsoft’s family of consoles was deliberately left out of the launch lineup. Following months of questions from players wondering why the multiplayer game had not arrived on their preferred hardware, Australian developer House House broke its silence in an online statement.
Big Walk won’t be coming to Xbox, and the developers have now explained why.House House says the decision was made in support of the BDS movement, which stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. BDS is a Palestinian-led campaign that uses boycotts and other forms of… pic.twitter.com/3iKEN9TKel
The studio cited direct support for the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which designates Microsoft Games and Xbox as priority boycott targets due to the tech giant’s provision of Azure cloud computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli military. House House originally signaled that console availability would exclude Microsoft’s hardware when it outlined its platform plans in June 2026.
The Developer Statement and Gamer Disappointment
House House acknowledged that omitting an Xbox version runs counter to the game’s core design philosophy. Big Walk is built around cooperative proximity chat and exploration tailored for groups of friends playing together across different platforms.
It has always been our intention for Big Walk to be played by groups of friends, and we know that keeping the game off Xbox runs counter to those intentions. This decision means that some people will miss out on playing Big Walk with their friends, and we understand the disappointment we’re causing. We are disappointed too.
Despite the friction for gaming groups whose members rely on Microsoft consoles, the studio stated it will not reconsider its stance until Microsoft and/or Xbox have been removed from the BDS movement’s active boycott targets.
Broader Industry Boycotts Facing Microsoft
Activists and worker groups have put pressure on Microsoft since the BDS movement targeted the company in April 2025 to protest its technology contracts with the Israeli military. While Microsoft conducted an internal review in May 2025 acknowledging that its Azure cloud and AI services were supplied to the Israel Ministry of Defence, the company claimed its review found no evidence those technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza. Activist pressure has nevertheless yielded some policy shifts, with reports indicating Microsoft cut off specific Israeli military access used for mass surveillance of Palestinian residents.
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- House House Skips Xbox Release for Big Walk Over BDS Campaign (time.news)
