Microsoft Involved With Funding of “Illegal Migrant Simulator” Take Us North
- Microsoft’s Developer Acceleration Program provided funding and mentorship to Anima Interactive
- Presentation of the game at gamescom attempted to shift the narrative and terminology
- Anima Interactive founder Karla Reyes closed her X account following massive backlash online
- Conspiracy theories of globalist involvement in support of the game are farfetched
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Microsoft’s Role in Funding Take Us North
On Aug. 21 during the gamescom congress 2025 event, Karla Reyes, the Founder and Creative Director of Anima Interactive, gave a presentation called “Fiction, Fact, and Social Impact: Authentic Storytelling and Narrative Change through Take Us North.” The game caught attention online and was met with merciless criticism and described as an “illegal migrant simulator,” and its funding leads directly to Microsoft via its Developer Acceleration Program (DAP).
The DAP was founded in 2023 and specifically supports developers who are led by people from Black, Indigenous, Latino or LGBTQIA+ communities, women, developers with disabilities, developers from emerging markets or teams with unique perspectives.
Reyes and Take Us North was featured in a spotlight on the DAP website on April 18 this year where she’s quoted as thanking the program for funding and keeping development of the game on track.
“Beyond the crucial financial support, the Developer Acceleration Program has provided our team with an external accountability structure through milestones, which has energized the team to work toward shared goals,” Reyes said in an interview with Miguel Lopez, a Microsoft Game Dev Contributing Editor.
“DAP is more than a funding initiative; it is a lifeline for independent creators, especially those from historically marginalized backgrounds who have been systemically shut out of access to capital, mentorship, and visibility.”
Shifting The Narrative to Migration
During her presentation of Take Us North, Reyes emphasized the importance of harnessing the power to drive a meaningful social and narrative change through video games, and cited her studio’s narrative-driven Take Us North as an example of a game that immerses players in the journey undertaken by migrants trying to cross the US-Mexico border.
“Given how sensitive and complex and nuanced the subject matter is, we want to make sure that we are telling these stories authentically and that we are reaching our goal in trying to shift hearts and minds around this,” Reyes said at the gamescom congress.
“The narrative that’s being pushed is obviously ‘they’re stealing our jobs’ as one of the big rhetoric pushes, and part of what we’re trying to do is challenge this misinformation.”
To push the authenticity of Take Us North, the game features public opinion interviews with people on the topic of migration rather than what the game is really about – using stealth to avoid getting spotted by border patrols (la migra) and crossing the border illegally.
“In the game you play the role of a migrant guide, or a guía, often known as coyotes. Coyotes are often associated with the drug trade, the cartels. But it’s more complicated than that and that’s why we wanted to show you this game.”
Gamescom Presentation Met With Merciless Criticism
Notorious YouTube World of Warcraft gamer and political and gaming culture commentator Zach Hoyt, more commonly known as Asmongold, did not hold back on his thoughts when reflecting on Reyes’s gamescom presentation.
“I think that I’m doing a public service. I think I’m helping people realize how blatantly manipulative, toxic, problematic, and bad it is. I think that there is an overabundance of emotionally charged messaging that is designed intentionally to make you give up your country, to give up your culture, to give up your morality, and to instead effectively adopt someone else’s,” he commented in a YouTube video titled The Illegal Migrant Simulator is insane.
Reyes spoke about her team working with a professor in California who has done extensive research both in Latin America and along the border: “He published a book last year called ‘Soldiers and Kings,’ which is all about smuggling (people) across the US-Mexico border.”
Asmongold’s immediate response was that anybody who’s smuggling (people) across the border illegally isn’t a soldier and they’re certainly not a king.
“They are criminals that often sexually abuse the people that they’re doing things with and also manipulate them, sometimes kill them and traffic over drugs that kill people. They’re parasites,” Asmongold said, adding: “The people that do that are awful.”
Since the online backlash, Reyes’s X account was bombarded with comments to the point where she ended up deleting it entirely. Her Instagram account is still active but set to private. The studio’s official website has also been set to private.
Diverse Funding Avenues And Conspiracies
Apart from the crucial backing from Microsoft’s DAP, there are now rumors of The World Economic Forum being involved in financing Anima Interactive because of Reyes’s LinkedIn profile stating that she is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper, a community of young leaders.
The only connection between Reyes, the World Economic Forum, and Anima Interactive is on a website called Better Societies where several Global Shapers are listed as session speakers. Reyes’s profile has a presentation called “Play With Purpose: Leveraging Games for Social Impact.”
Meanwhile, the Take Us North Kickstarter page looks healthy, having surpassed its initial goal of $30,000 and currently sitting on $56,120 from 590 backers. In the early stages of the game, it received financial support from “Microsoft Xbox, Cinereach, and Clever Endeavour Games,” according to the Kickstarter page.
It’s also been reported that Take Us North is backed by the UN, a farfetched conspiracy based on a remark on the game’s Kickstarter page. An early-stage demo was showcased at the UN while it was code-named American Dream.
“Our first public showcase was at GDC this year, and Take Us North was listed among the top indie games at GDC by GamesHub and NPR. We’ve since showcased at other festivals around the world including London Games Festival, A MAZE, Gamescom LatAm, and Tribeca,” it says on the game’s Kickstarter page.
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