The developer behind the slot machine-based indie game Luck Be a Landlord has asked fans not to buy it on Xbox, and instead told Kotaku he wants people to boycott Microsoft due to the company continuing to support Israel in its violent attacks against Palestine and its people.
On December 18, Luck Be a Landlord creator Dan DiIorio reshared a post about investigative games reporting outlet People Make Games boycotting Xbox due to its involvement in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The dev further added that he didn’t want people to buy the slot machine game on Xbox.
“Please do not purchase Luck Be a Landlord on Xbox,” posted DiIorio. “I will be making a $10,000 donation to The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund to (hopefully) help offset the revenue the game has generated for Microsoft.”
Originally released in 2023, Luck Be a Landlord is a roguelike slot machine game that helped inspire the creation of Balatro. In the game, players try to pay their rent using a slot machine that can be upgraded and tweaked. Luck Be a Landlord first launched in 2023 on PC but was ported to consoles earlier this year.
“I would love for everyone to give what they can to The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, whether they purchased the game on Xbox or not,” DiIorio told Kotaku via email. “I also encourage those with Game Pass subscriptions to cancel them.”
DiIorio isn’t the first indie developer to publicly distance themselves from Xbox and vocally support the ongoing and growing boycott against the company. In April, the developers behind Tenderfoot Tactics pulled the game from the Xbox store in solidarity with the BDS campaign against Israel.
“We hope that Microsoft will listen to the voices of their workers and customers and stop all business with the criminal Israeli military, which we have watched conduct an open genocide in Gaza over the last 18 months,” said one developer at the time on social media as reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The boycott against Israel has continued to cause problems for Xbox and will likely do so moving forward into 2026.
