One of the most beloved indie games of the past decade has quietly vanished from Xbox — and its developer is being completely open about why. Players noticed on October 29 that Celeste and Towerfall: Ascension had disappeared from Microsoft’s platform, and developer Maddy Thorson, who led development of both titles at Maddy Makes Games, confirmed it in a post on Bluesky: “For those who’re asking, yes we delisted Celeste and TowerFall on XBox. We did this to support the BDS boycott.”
Why Microsoft Is a Boycott Target
BDS is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement — an initiative modeled on the sanctions campaigns against apartheid-era South Africa, aimed at Israel over its occupation and the treatment of Palestinians. Microsoft is on its target list because, as the movement frames it, the company has deep technological ties to the Israeli military: Microsoft supplies the Israeli army with Azure cloud and AI services, and both Polygon and GamesRadar cite 2025 reporting from The Guardian which found that Azure technology had been used in mass surveillance of Palestinians. According to that reporting, Microsoft eventually rescinded Israel’s access to the Azure technology used to monitor millions of Palestinian phone calls, after protests and backlash — a move BDS celebrated as a win, though the group says Microsoft remains a target because it continues to supply other technologies. The movement’s gaming guidance is unusually specific: it asks supporters to boycott Microsoft products whenever possible, singling out Xbox platforms, Game Pass subscriptions, and Microsoft-published titles including Minecraft, Call of Duty and Candy Crush. (Microsoft has previously said BDS also targets companies like HP, Disney, Intel, Dell and Reebok.)
A Growing Movement Among Developers
Maddy Thorson is not the first developer to act, but Celeste is arguably the highest-profile game yet to join the boycott. A few weeks ago, House House — the studio behind this year’s co-op hit Big Walk, which currently sits on the Ultimate Game of the Year shortlist at this year’s Golden Joystick Awards (which we covered here) — announced the game would not come to Xbox in support of BDS. “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,” the studio said. “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.” Other studios have taken similar stances: Penguin Colony developer Origame Digital included a scathing statement in the game’s credits and blocked the game’s sales in Israel in solidarity with Palestine.
What This Means for Players
The practical impact is limited for now: Celeste, released in 2018 to rave reviews as a dark horse Game of the Year contender and long one of the best-rated games on Steam, remains available on PlayStation, Nintendo and non-Microsoft PC platforms — as does Towerfall: Ascension, the single-screen multiplayer action game Polygon once called “the new gold standard in the local multiplayer renaissance.” But the symbolic weight is considerable. When a studio is willing to walk away from an entire platform’s worth of sales for one of the most acclaimed indie games of the decade, it signals that the games industry’s relationship with Microsoft has genuinely frayed — on both sides of the ledger.