The SuperDQP Weekly - April 2025 Housekeeping

Crystal Hyde

Crystal Hyde

— 2 min read
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Returning for a quick update.

Image Credit: Midway / Nightdive Studios via Steam

I’ve made the decision to indefinitely postpone my coverage of the DOOM franchise. Many employees at Microsoft have organized a protest over their AI models being used by the Israeli military in the wake of their actions in the Gaza Strip, and I am making this decision in solidarity with those protesters.

I make this decision independently from any organization, as a personal consumer choice. My choice does not speak for any organization that I’m involved with.

I also do not make this decision out of a sense of antisemitism, or relationship with Hamas. This is out of protest towards the actions of the current Israeli military, and Microsoft’s direct relationship to them.

I understand that boycotting Microsoft is a difficult proposition; many rely on Microsoft’s software in their daily life, let alone the games they own and publish. My computer has Windows 11 installed on it, and it’s an operating system that I need for my daily work.

This is to say nothing of the studios and games that Microsoft has purchased the rights to over the years.

This is not a call to immediately uninstall all of your Microsoft-owned games and software. Nobody is expecting you to cease playing GZDoom or the copy of Fallout: New Vegas that you bought a decade before Microsoft bought its publisher.

However, if you feel similarly towards Microsoft to the way I do, there are steps that you can take to limit revenue streams that go towards them.

  • You can unsubscribe from services like Game Pass or Microsoft Office 365 (LibreOffice is a fine, open-source alternative if you still need to work on spreadsheets or Word docs).
  • You can find alternatives to live service games belonging to Microsoft that you currently play, such as Call of Duty or World of Warcraft. If you’re into Call of Duty and you haven’t tried Titanfall 2, I highly recommend doing so. It often goes on sale for cheap.
  • And of course, you can wait to buy new Microsoft releases like DOOM: The Dark Ages until after Microsoft gives a meaningful response to the protests. If you have a DOOM reboot fix, I highly recommend Turbo Overkill as an indie alternative. It has a chainsaw slide dash.
Image Credit: Trigger Happy Interactive via Steam

Since this decision also upends the next seven weeks of newsletter coverage that I had planned, I’m also going to take a brief two-or-three-week hiatus to figure out what to write about next. Keeping a weekly rhythm has been great for the first few months of this whole newsletter endeavor, but a larger break is in order, I think. I’ll aim to be back on April 28, at the very latest.

Again, this is a personal decision, and if you do not feel the same pressure to make this same kind of decision, or if Microsoft’s software is a key part of your social or professional life, then you don’t have to agree with it or do the same. And, again, my opinions and decisions are my own and not the opinions or decisions of organizations that I work with.

See you after the break.

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