New

Why An Up-and-coming Indie Developer Is Returning Microsoft’s Money

In this week’s newsletter: the creators of All Will Rise on standing up to the tech giant – and joining the No Games for Genocide movement

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Video games are in a funding crisis. Investor money flowed freely during the pandemic gaming boom, but now the well has run dry. It is increasingly difficult, for indie developers especially, to get the capital to make games. It is extremely unusual, then, to hear of a developer returning an investor’s money. Yet that is what Speculative Agency, developers of All Will Rise, have just done.

Last year, All Will Rise, a deck-building game about a team of activists fighting for the future of their oligarch-run city, received money from Microsoft as part of a developer acceleration programme. In late-2025, however, the team became aware of No Games for Genocide, a collective of developers, journalists, union organisers and others that came together as a result of Israeli assault on Gaza to protest against “material and commercial ties between the games industry and enabling genocide, war crimes, and the military industrial complex”.

Back to Listing

credit:

Why An Up-and-coming Indie Developer Is Returning Microsoft’s Money

Popular Products