Video games aren't usually a matter of life and death. For most of us, they're an escape from a boring Tuesday or a way to blow off steam with friends. But for Rasheed Abueideh and the small, scattered community of Palestinian developers, a line of code is a form of survival. Making a game in a war zone isn't just about entertainment. It’s about proving you’re still there.
The Palestinian gaming scene doesn't look like Silicon Valley. There are no ergonomic chairs or free snack bars. Instead, there are power cuts, unstable internet, and the constant threat of physical destruction. When you're trying to render a 3D environment while your neighborhood is under bombardment, the stakes change. The "game" isn't just the software. The game is the act of creation itself.
The Reality of Development Under Fire
You can’t talk about Palestinian games without talking about Liyla and the Shadows of War. This wasn't some polished AAA title with a multi-million dollar marketing budget. It was a stark, monochromatic platformer that put players in the shoes of a father trying to guide his family to safety during the 2014 Gaza conflict.
Rasheed Abueideh, the creator, didn't make it to be "fun" in the traditional sense. He made it because he lived it. He wanted the world to see the impossible choices forced upon civilians. When the game first tried to launch on the Apple App Store, it was rejected. Apple initially claimed it wasn't a "game" but rather a political statement. The backlash was swift. Gamers and developers worldwide pointed out the blatant double standard. War games that let you play as a soldier are fine, but a game about surviving as a civilian is "too political"?
Apple eventually blinked and allowed the game on the store. It was a small victory, but it highlighted a massive problem. Palestinian creators aren't just fighting technical hurdles. They’re fighting digital gatekeepers who would rather they stay silent.
Coding Between the Blackouts
Imagine you're halfway through debugging a complex script. Suddenly, the lights go out. Not for five minutes, but for twelve hours. This is the daily grind for developers in Gaza and parts of the West Bank.
You learn to work fast. You learn to save your work every thirty seconds. You learn to treat a working internet connection like liquid gold. This isn't just an inconvenience. It’s a structural barrier designed to keep these voices out of the global market.
Building a game requires constant communication with servers, asset libraries, and collaborators. When the infrastructure is systematically dismantled, the simple act of downloading a plugin becomes a multi-day ordeal. Yet, the games keep coming.
- Fursan al-Aqsa is another example that stirred up massive controversy.
- Developed by Nidal Nijm, it’s a third-person shooter that flips the traditional Western military narrative.
- It explicitly puts the player in the role of a Palestinian resistance fighter.
Whether you agree with the imagery or not, the game’s existence on platforms like Steam is a massive shift. It challenges the long-standing trope in gaming where Middle Eastern characters are almost exclusively used as target practice for Western protagonists. It forces the player to inhabit a different perspective, and for many in the industry, that’s exactly what makes it dangerous.
Why the Industry Tries to Look Away
The global gaming industry loves to talk about "diversity and inclusion." You'll see it on every corporate slide deck from Los Angeles to London. But that inclusion often stops where geopolitics begin.
Most major publishers are terrified of the "Palestinian" label. They worry about alienating markets or catching heat from lobbyists. This cowardice leads to a form of digital erasure. If you don't see Palestinian stories in your Steam library, you start to believe they don't exist.
I’ve seen how this works. I’ve talked to developers who were told to "neutralize" their settings. They were asked to remove specific landmarks or avoid mentioning the word Palestine altogether. Most refused. They know that if they sanitize their work, they’re doing the censors' job for them.
The Psychological Weight of the Work
Creating art in a pressure cooker does something to your brain. For many Palestinian devs, the work is therapeutic, but it's also a burden. You feel the weight of representing an entire people. If your game crashes, it’s not just a bad review; it feels like a failure to tell the story correctly.
There's also the physical risk. In the recent escalations, we’ve seen the offices of tech hubs and co-working spaces in Gaza leveled. Computers, servers, and years of hard work turned into dust in seconds.
Yet, the survivors keep going. They move to cafes with generators. They share laptops. They use whatever scraps of bandwidth they can find to upload their builds. It’s a level of grit that most "pro" developers in the West couldn't even fathom.
Breaking the Digital Siege
Distribution is the next big fight. Even if you finish your game, how do you get paid? International banking restrictions often make it nearly impossible for Gazan developers to receive payments from platforms like Google Play or Steam.
Some have to rely on friends abroad to hold their funds. Others look into decentralized options, though those come with their own set of risks. The system is rigged to keep them as consumers, never producers.
But the community is growing. Groups like Gaza Sky Geeks have spent years training the next generation of coders and designers. They aren't asking for charity. They're asking for a fair shot. They want to compete on the global stage based on the quality of their code and the depth of their storytelling.
Digital Resistance is Not a Meta-Commentary
We need to stop treating Palestinian games as "interesting experiments" or "political artifacts." They are games. They are technical achievements born out of impossible conditions.
When you play something like Under Siege, you aren't just looking at polygons. You're looking at a refusal to be silenced. The industry needs to step up. It's not enough to have a "Diverse Characters" tag on an storefront. Platforms need to actively protect these creators from targeted harassment and arbitrary bans.
How You Can Actually Help
Don't just post a hashtag. If you want to support this movement, you have to be intentional.
- Seek out the titles. Go to itch.io and search for Palestinian developers.
- Buy the games. Even if they’re small, the financial support helps bypass the economic strangulation.
- Review them. Positive reviews on major platforms help these games beat the algorithms that often bury "controversial" content.
- Demand transparency. When a game by a Palestinian dev gets pulled for "policy violations," ask the platform for a specific reason. Hold them to their own standards.
The fight for Palestine isn't just happening on the ground. It’s happening in lines of C++, in Discord servers, and on digital storefronts. These developers are showing us that you can take away their power, their internet, and their homes, but you can't take away their drive to create. They’re still here. They’re still coding. And they aren't going anywhere.
