As Riley has already reported, earlier today several wings of the US federal government spent their time tying some of the current administration's most racist and heinous policies--like masked goons snatching innocent people off the street--to the Halo franchise.
There's no ambiguity here, no wink or nod to hide behind. They literally came out and directly tied immigrants to America to The Flood, a 'parasitic alien lifeform' that you spend the Halo games blasting to hell and back because there are countless millions of them and they're trying to invade and corrupt the universe. They're using Halo imagery to recruit armed, masked goons.
In any sane and normal world, even one we lived in mere months ago, this would have prompted an immediate comment from the large, wealthy company that owns Halo. At least, a cursory "Master Chief fights for peace, and we have no association with this" line would have been expected, like we see most days of the week when a musician has to distance themselves from a song used by a Trump video. Even taking into account the fact Microsoft knows some of its customer base are racist fascists, they also surely know that most Halo fans are not racist fascists, and would be horrified to see Master Chief associated with any of this.
But we no longer live in a sane world. And so in the hours that have passed since the images were first posted on official US government social media accounts, there hasn't been a peep. The only thing we've heard from Microsoft is “Microsoft does not have anything to share on this matter”:
I asked Microsoft PR about this—specially the DHS using Halo IP to recruit for ICE—and the company declined to comment.
— Nicole Carpenter (@nicolecarpenter.bsky.social) 2025-10-27T19:22:01.094Z
Microsoft's refusal to actually say something here is more damning than any mealy-mouthed comment they could have made. They have been presented with what must be one of the most nightmarish scenarios anyone working in comms or PR can imagine--someone linking your video game series to government-sanctioned tyranny--and with most of the day to say something have instead simply declined to comment.
Sure, there's the fact we're talking about the US government here, that's a factor! But maybe it also has something to do with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella being one of Silicon Valley's most overt ass-kissers, who earlier this year attended the President's fealty banquet and, as Fortune writes, "thanked Trump for putting policies in place for the U.S. to lead in AI, praised Trump’s approach of supporting rather than fighting technology companies, calling it crucial for maintaining America’s technological leadership globally."
Maybe it's because Microsoft, under Nadella's watch, is helping bulldoze an entire section of the historic White House, an act the company donated money towards.
Maybe it's just that loads of senior people at Microsoft are totally fine being active participants in the genocide of the Palestinian people, something that absolutely aligns their corporate aims with those of the current administration. And finally, maybe it's just because the people running Xbox itself are simply not very good at their jobs.
Whatever the reason, it's not like it matters. Like so many other cowardly and complicit tech CEOs of this age, and the companies they lead, Microsoft’s actions (or in this case, inaction) has done nothing today but remind us of something we already know: we should be spending our time and money elsewhere.
