House House kept Big Walk off Xbox to honor the BDS boycott of Microsoft

Big Walk, the co-op multiplayer walking game from developer House House, has been popular since launching in August — but Xbox owners have been left out, and the studio has now explained why. In a blog post, House House said it deliberately declined to bring the game to Microsoft's consoles in line with the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has called for a boycott of Microsoft and its gaming products. The Verge reported on the announcement.

A targeted boycott, and where Microsoft fits

According to The Verge, the BDS movement named Microsoft a priority boycott target in June 2025 over contracts the company holds with the Israeli military and government. The campaign singles out Xbox consoles, Game Pass subscriptions, Microsoft-owned gaming franchises and Microsoft-produced gaming accessories. Beyond the boycott itself, Microsoft's Israel ties have drawn internal criticism: The Verge notes that the company's own employees have protested the relationship, and that staffers were fired for taking part in pro-Palestine demonstrations.

House House's explanation

House House framed the decision as a conflict between the game's design intent and its politics. Big Walk is meant to be played by groups of friends, the studio acknowledged, and keeping it off Xbox works against that goal — a trade-off the developers said they recognize and regret even as they defended the choice. Their position, stated in the blog post, is blunt: "We would love for people to be able to play the game on Xbox, but not until Microsoft and/or Xbox have been removed as BDS boycott targets."

The developers went on to say they believe coordinated collective action can confront powerful interests, and closed the post with an expression of hope that Palestine will one day be free.

The Windows question

The boycott logic does not extend to Windows. Big Walk is sold through Steam and therefore runs on Microsoft's operating system, a gap The Verge flagged in its coverage. The outlet says it asked House House why the game was not withheld from Windows as well, and that it will update its story if the studio responds. The BDS campaign's stated gaming targets center on Xbox hardware, Game Pass and Microsoft-owned franchises, which may explain the distinction, but the developer has not publicly addressed it.

Why it matters

Platform availability decisions are normally driven by technical limits, store contracts or commercial strategy. House House has instead made one explicitly political, accepting a smaller potential audience in support of an activist campaign — a rare, concrete case of geopolitical conflict determining where a game is sold. It also exposes the practical ambiguities of corporate boycotts: a studio can refuse to ship on Xbox while still selling software that runs on Windows, and the line between the two is not one the developer has drawn in public. For Xbox players, the consequence is simple. Unless Microsoft's standing with the BDS movement changes, Big Walk will not appear on the console.