Hi everyone,
Following our announcement on August 20th 2025 of adding Israel to the list of sanctioned countries in our Terms of Service, we've received a large number of user questions and some hate mail as well as many emails of support for the decision.
I will be answering here most of the questions we've received so we can clarify The Forge's stance.
Before we begin, I want to say that I am deeply disappointed (though unsurprised) by the many users who emailed us with antisemitic statements—trying to perpetuate one of the most dangerous and prevalent antisemitic tropes—which is to associate all of the world's Jewry with the state of Israel and its actions. This antisemitic trope puts Jews worldwide in danger and the very idea that being against Genocide or being antizionist makes someone an antisemite or a Jew hater is to imply that Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Apartheid are Jewish values. We strongly reject any such claims and we refuse to blame any Jewish person for the existence or the actions of the state of Israel or the actions or statements made by its Zionist population. We need to fight antisemitism, not weaponize it. I strongly believe that the Zionist ideology is itself antisemitic and that Jewish liberation is intrinsically linked with Palestinian liberation.
Due to the nature of the subject, we will be engaging in political discourse. While I speak for The Forge as its CEO, the political views expressed here are my own and are not representative of The Forge's staff as a whole. I will answer all relevant questions received since August 20th, via email, social media and through our Discord server, however, I will not answer pointless arguments meant to distract from reality.
• How can I close my account?
If you wish to close your Forge account and delete all associated data, you can do so by emailing us at [email protected] and request deletion of your account. The process is simple and ensures that accounts do not get deleted by mistake as we will direct you to our documentation for exporting all your data, assets and purchases and once you confirm that you have backed up your data and you are ready to have your account deleted, we take care of that, usually within 1 to 2 business days.
• Aren't you required to have an "unsubscribe" button in your email?
No, that only applies to marketing emails (which The Forge does not do). A Terms of Service update is a mandatory email which we are legally required to send to all our users. This is why there is no unsubscribe button in the Terms of Service Update email you have received.
• What if my account was flagged in error as being from a sanctioned country?
If you believe that your account was mistakenly flagged as being from a sanctioned country, contact us at [email protected] and we can bypass the flag once you prove that your location and residence is not in one of the sanctioned countries.
Do note however that due to a bug in our location detection system in the initial days of the update, which used strictly anonymized IP addresses, some users had been mistakenly flagged as coming from the wrong country. We have removed the flag on all of those accounts automatically and we apologize for the inconvenience and worry it might have caused to those affected.
• Isn't this change discriminatory and illegal?
No, because a geographic location is not a protected group.
We have not imposed a restriction on "Israelis" or any nationality, ethnicity or religious group. We have imposed a restriction on "people located in Israel", which is a geographic location. If we had imposed the restriction on Israelis regardless of where they are located, or imposed the restriction only on certain people within Israel, then that would have been discriminatory and illegal.
This sanction is no different than the one imposed on Russia for example, and it is not only legal, but the sanction is a legal requirement as per international laws.
• Why isn't Russia in the sanctioned list on your ToS and why is Crimea sanctioned?
Since 2022, Russia has been under sanctions, which we comply with as a Canadian company. The omission of Russia from our Terms of Service was an oversight: we had only added Israel without updating the rest of the content, leaving the list of sanctioned countries outdated. The Terms of Service have now been revised with a clearer, more complete, and future-proof sanctions clause.
Crimea, as well as Donetsk, Luhansk and the occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are also under sanctions as per our legal Canadian obligations. As occupied territories by an illegal occupying force, they are under a full embargo and users from those regions cannot use our services.
• Why are you restricting access to Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Iran, etc.. ?
As stated in our Terms of Service, these territories are restricted due to international law, global sanctions (Canada and US sanction list) or Stripe regulations.
In the case of Cuba, Venezuela and Syria, the restriction is not one of access, but one of financial transactions: users from those countries can still use The Forge, but cannot purchase services or content. We have updated our Terms of Service to make it clear which countries are under an economic sanction and which ones are under a full embargo.
• Will you be adding more restrictions on other countries or businesses?
We do not have at the moment any plans for adding further restrictions, and we sincerely hope that there will never again be another genocide in our lifetime. However, we cannot predict the future and the global geopolitical landscape which will have broader legal and moral consequences. We are required to abide by Canadian laws, international law and the terms of service of our payment processors (Stripe and Paypal), and as those laws change who is on a global sanctions list, we will also have to change our list of Restricted Territories.
We also do have some red lines which will make us boycott or sanction organizations, such as our departure from X on January 29th 2025 after its CEO unapologetically did two Nazi salutes. We have also been in the process of moving away from Google Workspace for our enterprise services, and from Github for our source code repositories (#NoTechForApartheid), due to Amazon's, Google's and Microsoft's complicity in war crimes via their Project Nimbus.
• Why are you mixing politics with gaming?
We are not, but why shouldn't we? (anyone interested in a watermelon theme perhaps?).
Although many issues can be viewed through a political lens, our decision is not political—it is a matter of law and basic humanity. Opposing genocide is not a political stance; genocide is universally recognized as a crime and an evil act, condemned by all international laws and standards and cannot be reduced to a political position. The sanctions and restrictions we impose on territories are legal obligations—and in the case of Israel, they are also obligations of humanity, morality, and basic decency.
We do not mix politics with gaming, we simply follow the law. If you are more outraged at the decision to ban users from Israel than you are at the extermination of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel, then you are the one taking an illegal and "political" position.
Besides the rule of law that we must follow, we are all humans and are therefore political beings by nature. Neutrality is complicity, and any that claim to not want to talk about a specific political subject are likely ones benefitting from the silence of others on that subject.
• Why are you claiming that there is a Genocide in Gaza?
Israel is and has been committing genocide against the Palestinian population for well over 100 years now (before even the establishment of the state of Israel), which culminated in the Nakba of 1948. Israel is the product of a European settler-colonial project in Palestine and it cannot exist without performing Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing and cannot exist without its Apartheid laws and refusal to follow international laws.
What we are seeing for the past two years now is simply the latest escalation of the Genocide to a new unimaginable scale; it is the complete extermination and annihilation of the Palestinian people. We are witnessing the Gaza Holocaust and nobody who has done the bare minimum of research on the subject could claim that it isn't so.
From a legal perspective—as my opinion is irrelevant—the International Court of Justice ruled on January 26th 2024 that Israel is plausibly committing Genocide against Palestinians and ordered Israel to follow measures to prevent acts of genocide, which Israel failed to do. An order for Additional Measures was issued on May 24th 2024 which Israel entirely ignored.
Additionally, The International Court of Justice issued an Advisory Opinion on July 19th 2024 concluding that Israel's presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is unlawful and its conduct amounted to segregation and discrimination against Palestinians, which aligns with elements of the legal definition of Apartheid under international law. A subsequent United Nations General Assembly resolution on September 18th 2024 enforced the Advisory Opinion.
A long list of Genocide experts and Holocaust scholars have announced that Israel's actions amount to Genocide, including Francesca Albanese, Omer Bartov, Amos Goldberg, Raz Segal, and others. The same with international human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem , UN Human Rights Office Special Committee, Doctors without Borders, and many more, who have called the Genocide in Gaza for what it is.
Only a few days ago, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, a 500-member body organization of the world's top genocide scholars, released a resolution, voted at 86% approval, on the situation in Gaza and declared that Israel's policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, as defined in international humanitarian law, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and the United Nations Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. To get a better idea of the scope of proof and consensus on the question of Genocide, the resolution is well worth the read.
I won't bother listing all of the war crimes we've watched livestreamed to our phones for nearly 2 years, I invite you to read in full the reports mentioned above (and videos/links throughout this FAQ) if you wish to try to comprehend the incomprehensible.
(I am fully aware that most of the scholars and organizations I mentioned above are Western, Israeli or Jewish. I did not do it to silence the Palestinian voices who are documenting their own genocide, but because I understand the implicitly racist world that we live in, which makes it practically pointless to name Palestinian scholars or organizations)
• Which sanction source are you using? What legal grounds are you using to sanction Israel?
As mentioned above, there are multiple rulings by international bodies which require a stop of all trade with Israel, as well as demand a full embargo due to the nature of Israel as an occupying force in Palestine, just like Russia-occupied Ukraine is under a full embargo because it is an illegal occupation.
The International Court of Justice ruling of July 19th 2024, recognizing that Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal and is consistent with Apartheid, requires all states not aid maintaining Israel's presence in the occupied territories. The subsequent UNGA resolution gave a deadline of September 18th 2025 for the full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories, the removal of all settlers from the West Bank and ending trade with the illegal settlements.
Instead, The Israeli Knesset voted for full annexation of the West Bank and to settle and ethnically cleanse Gaza. Since the latest escalation of the Genocide in 2023, the Israeli Occupation Forces have also occupied South Lebanon and South Syria, as well as bombing Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Qatar, a civilian boat off the coast of Italy, and another civilian boat in Tunisian waters, transporting humanitarian aid. Israeli ministers, including the Prime Minister Netanyahu, have also openly talked about the Eretz Israel project (also known as Greater Israel), which is an expansionist plan for the future occupation of Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Egypt, as has been planned since the late 1960s.
The ICJ ruling alone is grounds for a full embargo on Israel, however, for the past 23 months, we've also been bearing witness to the Gaza Holocaust, and there are also many resolutions and legal rulings related to the crime of genocide, as evidenced in my answer to the previous question.
Following the ICJ Provisonal Measures of January 2024, all states party to the Genocide Convention must take all possible steps to prevent genocide or risk being complicit. For The Forge, refusing to provide services to Israel is a concrete way to fulfill this responsibility. Failing to do so would expose us to legal and reputational risk.
While Canada itself has not adopted a blanket embargo on Israel, as a Canadian company, we support—and if it is within our power to join—the lawsuit by the Coalition for Canadian Accountability in Gaza against the Canadian Government for its complicity in the crime of genocide, and its failure to act to prevent genocide, as per the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Moreover, the June 16th 2025 report "From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide", by the United Nations Special Rapporteur to the Occupied Palestinian Territories, recommends sanctions, full arms embargo, suspension of all trade with Israel (article 94) and urges corporate entities to promptly cease all business activities with the occupation (article 95). The report also puts responsibility on all corporate enterprises "regardless of their size, sector, operational context, ownership and structure" and adds that "corporations must respect human rights even if a State where they operate does not, and they may be held accountable even if they have complied with the domestic laws where they operate. In other words, compliance with domestic laws does not preclude/is not a defense to responsibility or liability." (Annex I, 2.2)
Finally, The Forge is a private company, the legal basis is unnecessary and there is no obligation for us to provide service internationally and we are well within our rights to not provide service to certain geographic locations, regardless of any sanctions list. Israel is a settler-colony, that's not normal; it's an occupation, and that is not normal. Israel is committing Genocide, that is also not normal. It is not normal or moral to have "business as usual" and normalize relationships with an illegitimate state committing such heinous acts.
I've been in the streets protesting nearly every day for the past 2 years, and I have many friends who have had multiple family members murdered by the genocidal state of Israel, and I simply cannot, in good conscience, dissociate my activism from my business. I cannot allow potentially the very same war criminals murdering my friends, to use the platform we have built to "relax" after a long day of slaughter. I simply wish I'd had the courage to do so long ago. For not acting sooner, I apologize to my friends, my community and to all the Palestinian people, for we have failed you, and we have failed humanity by our cowardly inaction.
• How about Israelis who are against what their government is doing?
Regardless of what a specific Israeli thinks, an embargo applies to everyone. Cherry-picking who can and cannot use the service based on their political views would actually amount to discrimination and would therefore be illegal. As explained in a previous answer, a geographical location is not a protected group and therefore refusing service for the entire location, regardless of nationality, ethnicity, religion or political affiliation, is legal.
Besides, a recent survey released in May 2025 by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that 82% of Israelis want to ethnically cleanse Gaza by expelling every Palestinian from the Gaza strip, and 47% of Israelis admit to supporting the killing of all the inhabitants—men, women and children—of the Gaza Strip. This has even been dubbed a "democratic genocide" by some, as the government's actions reflect the population's will.
There are also over 700,000 Israelis who are illegal settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Independently of their political views, their presence is still illegal by international law.
Statistically, it is more likely that the average Israeli user is not against the Genocide and not an antizionist, but if the user is indeed against the Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, Apartheid and Occupation of Palestine, then I am sure that they would understand and celebrate our decision to sanction Israel.
• How about Palestinians living in Israel? Or the Palestinians of the West Bank who are forced to use Israeli internet services?
See the response to the previous question, the same rules apply equally based on geographic location.
The asking of the question itself though, is a weaponizing of the suffering of victims to protect the oppressor; a hostage-taking argument—using supposed harm to victims (Palestinians) as a reason to shield perpetrators (Israelis) from accountability.
It is funny however how some people are advocating in the name of Palestinians only when it upsets Israelis, and no actual Palestinian asked that question themselves.
Just like Black South Africans were likely not very upset when the world imposed sanctions on Apartheid South Africa from the 1960s to the 1990s until their Apartheid laws were dismantled, I'm sure that Palestinians will also appreciate our decision.
Also, we have no users from Palestine at this moment in time, as they are likely all too busy trying to fight for their survival, that playing roleplaying games is not high on their priority list.
• Shouldn't you also ban the US? Aren't you hypocrites?
Yes, we should, and yes we are hypocrites.
Not only the US, but Canada, Germany, the UK, France, Australia, most of Europe and most Arab countries from West Asia and North Africa, and so many others who are complicit, or participating, or funding, or giving diplomatic cover, for this Genocide.
That being said, we have no legal obligation to do that, as the ICJ rulings are specifically against Israel. Just like there are no sanctions for countries supporting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there are no sanctions for countries supporting Israel's Genocide on Palestine. The countries that are participating or complicit will eventually be brought to the courts to answer for their crimes, hopefully in a trial reminiscent of the Nuremberg trials.
If we were to stop service to all those who are complicit in this Genocide, then we would be shutting our doors and laying off everyone.
The choice was made to continue to provide a livelihood to our staff and provide the service they enjoy to our users, and only to sanction Israel. If that makes us hypocrites, then so be it.
That's all the questions we've received and I hope my answers clear up any confusion you might have had.
And since this post made me openly discuss politics, I'll conclude with:
