Speculative Agency Returns Xbox Funding, Calls on Indie Devs to Join Genocide Boycott

Speculative Agency, the indie studio behind the narrative courtroom deck-builder All Will Rise, has returned funding received from Microsoft through a developer acceleration programme and announced it is joining the movement urging the gaming industry to sever ties with the tech giant over its alleged complicity in the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.

The studio, which signed the Microsoft deal in 2025, confirmed that it approached the company to break the existing contract. Microsoft agreed. Details of the exit terms are still being finalized, though narrative director Meghna Jayanth — known for her work on Inkle's 80 Days and the skateboarding dating game Thirsty Suitors — noted that those at Microsoft they dealt with were receptive to the decision.

"The people we corresponded with at Microsoft have been very understanding of our decision,"

— Jayanth said.

The funding shortfall remains undisclosed for confidentiality reasons. What is clear is that the studio now carries greater financial risk and has reduced its potential audience by forgoing Xbox distribution. The move also puts pressure on the studio's ongoing crowdfunding campaign, which launched in February.

Speculative Agency did not reach a decision quickly. The studio weighed whether the boycott aligned with its own themes — All Will Rise is set in a speculative version of Kerala, India, and centers on ordinary people taking corporations to court for environmental destruction. The team debated whether refusing Microsoft's platform was consistent with a game already critical of corporate power and ecocide. Eventually, the urgency of the boycott movement and its potential to pressure Microsoft overrode those concerns.

"But eventually, the urgency of No Games For Genocide and its value as a growing movement that has the potential to pressure Microsoft to cease its complicity with Israeli genocide won out,"

— the studio said in a statement.

I see the tension here clearly: a small studio making a game explicitly about corporate accountability now staking real money on living out that premise. The stakes are not symbolic. Losing Microsoft funding during a period when indie financing is widely acknowledged as scarce means Speculative Agency is absorbing concrete financial damage to make this stand.

Jayanth used the announcement to call directly on others in the industry — indie teams in particular — to consider pledging to the No Games For Genocide boycott. She framed the act of joining not as a sacrifice but as leverage, arguing that corporations depend on developers' labor and creativity to function, and that collective action carries genuine pressure.

"The thing is, we are not powerless. Every action matters, and our actions matter immensely when we come together. There is a real opportunity for us to take a stand and pressure Microsoft to end its complicity. We can win."

— Meghna Jayanth

She extended the call beyond studio heads to individual developers, gamers, tech workers, and employees inside Microsoft itself who may disagree with how company leadership has handled its relationships with the US and Israeli armed forces.

All Will Rise combines strategic role-playing with deck-building mechanics inside a crime thriller narrative. The game has a demo currently available as the All Will Rise demo on Steam, and its Kickstarter campaign remains active. The project describes itself as "wild and messy," capable of shifting between cosy and dark registers within the same story.

I think the decision by Speculative Agency will be watched closely by other studios sitting on similar deals, weighing whether the reputational signal of joining the boycott outweighs the financial exposure of walking away from platform access and development funding during one of the harder periods in the indie market.

For those seeking a fuller account of Microsoft's military contracts and its relationship with the US and Israeli armed forces, People Make Games has published an in-depth video covering the issue in detail.