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# Future? No Thanks! Thinks The Revolution Is Possible, But Also Pretty Funny
- URL: https://aftermath.site/future-no-thanks-review/
- Published: 2026-09-04T17:36:51.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-04T17:36:51.000Z
- Description: The game is confident enough in its leftist politics to not take them so seriously, while also asking real questions about how we build the future together
- Author: Riley MacLeod
- Tags: Video Games, review, Impressions, future no thanks

Video games love to imagine dystopic futures– *Cyberpunk*, *Fallout, Wolfenstein*–and set the player as a hero fighting to make things better. Games that [do imagine something more hopeful](https://aftermath.site/4x-game-climate-capitalism-civilization-future/) are frequently systems games, helping players think on a grand scale how humanity might get from here to there. *Future? No Thanks!* does something different. It paints the kind of socialist utopia often dreamed of in DSA meetings and Bluesky posts, but then casts the player as an elderly boomer who thinks the whole thing is horseshit. 

[*Future? No Thanks!*](https://futurenothanks.com/?ref=aftermath.site)is the latest game by Molleindustria, a studio behind various [political simulation games](https://aftermath.site/new-york-times-simulator/) and digital experiments. The game has had a long road to its surprise release on Friday: shortly before it was meant to come out in late July, developer Paolo Pedercini announced that [it had been delayed](https://bsky.app/profile/molleindustria.org/post/3mrahp6hqrc24?ref=aftermath.site) due to being held up in [Steam’s content review](https://aftermath.site/steam-censorship-future-no-thanks-perfect-tides/). Over the next month-plus, Pedercini tried to communicate with Valve and to tweak the game, offering to remove a plotline centered on sex and change the names of some of the achievements. After Pedercini went public with how the situation had led to [players at August’s Gamescom being unable to see the *Future?* store page](https://bsky.app/profile/molleindustria.org/post/3mu363pkzzc2l?ref=aftermath.site) because of German age restriction laws, Valve [re-reviewed the game](https://bsky.app/profile/molleindustria.org/post/3mu6c37xfds27?ref=aftermath.site) to remove the restrictive tagging, and now the game is out. “I'm looking forward to talking to people about the game rather than about why Gabe Newell doesn't want to join [IARC](https://globalratings.com/?ref=aftermath.site), the different flavors of [USK](https://usk.de/en/?ref=aftermath.site), [Collective Shout](https://aftermath.site/itch-io-nsfw-adult-content-remove-payment-processors-collective-shout/) and payment processors,” Pedercini [wrote on Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/molleindustria.org/post/3mu6cjlllhc27?ref=aftermath.site).

> It looks like Steam re-reviewed Future? No Thanks! and removed the "frequent nudity or adult content" reverting the Germany geo-ban and the age verification by credit card in the UK. It officially has only "some nudity or adult content" as every good game should.  
>  
> [\[image or embed\]](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qtuursbdld45szkmbaids3h7/post/3mu6c37xfds27?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=aftermath.site)
> 
> — Molleindustria FUTURE? NO THANKS! DEMO OUT ([@molleindustria.org](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qtuursbdld45szkmbaids3h7?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=aftermath.site)) [August 28, 2026 at 5:19 PM](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qtuursbdld45szkmbaids3h7/post/3mu6c37xfds27?ref%5Fsrc=embed&ref=aftermath.site)

The version of the game out today still features the questlines Pedercini suspected could have led to the flag, though he told Aftermath that a character in the storyline now wears a bra. And it’s just one of several storylines in the game, which plays more like a traditional open world game than Molleindustria’s previous work. You play as Harvey Huffstone, a baby boomer whose life has been unnaturally extended thanks to advances in medical science. He now finds himself living in a version of the future where millennials and subsequent generations didn’t just (finally) come into power, but created the kind of world the New York Times and Washington Post op-eds of our day love to scaremonger against. 

There are vestiges of the old world–the United States has become balkanized, and not all areas are as progressive as the game’s Pittsburgh setting–but in Harvey’s world, there’s universal basic income and free health care. The city is full of free stores, ethically-sourced coffee shops, and suburbs being rewilded. The US Steel factory is now pronounced “us” and runs on consensus. Police are costumed characters trained in community safety and conflict de-escalation; today’s ACAB slogan now stands for “All Cops Are Besties.” (“Policing is like comedy,” one cop tells Harvey, “you always have to punch up.”) The billionaires all flew away to space and died; Elon Musk and his Hyperloop are slang insults now. This doesn’t mean everything is perfect–climate change is still an issue, notably–but the biggest problems Harvey observes aren’t the “gotcha”s that the Right seems to long for, where no one works or takes out the trash. Instead, they’re the problems you might already be familiar with depending how involved in leftist politics you are: There are too many meetings that take way too long, and everyone is a little bit cringe.

Harvey is a retired insurance claims specialist who feels left behind by this future, and he’s ready to end things. He’s chosen euthenasia, which he can get for free at the Bernie Sanders Geriatric Hospital, which has a memorial “to the victims of private healthcare” in its lobby. Before he goes, an algorithm (AI is still a part of this world, alas, though it now seems largely confined to MarxNet, the all-knowing head of Karl Marx) gives him a series of “last day on Earth” tasks. Most of these are peak boomer–eat a real steak, drive a gas car, smoke a cigar, have sex for the last time–but he’s also gnawed at by the possibility of reconciling with his estranged daughter and grandchild before he goes.

Of course none of these tasks are simple in a world of electric cars and biolab meat. The quests are fairly classic stuff: getting this object requires winning over these people, or getting into that area requires procuring this key. Pursuing all this takes Harvey around the city (either by subway or his on-demand motorized wheelchair), interacting with Pittsburgh’s various residents. As he does, he’s forced to enter into their lives a little more. He sits through an astonishing number of meetings (you can skip through them, but I, an inveterate meeting-lover, did not), avails himself of a public library that includes a meaty [cyberpunk translation of *Das Kapital*](https://perebite.com/cyberpunkcapital/?ref=aftermath.site#/cyberpunkcapital/chap-0#top), explores neo-pagan rituals, and even finds vestiges of the world he once knew hidden away in pockets. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/09/futstore.jpeg)

Molleindustria/Aftermath

*Future? No Thanks!* never becomes some big treatise on leftist politics or inter-generational conflict. Instead, by making the game’s protagonist someone it’s likely many of its players might consider an “enemy” and setting up as hostile a world many of those players might dream of living in, it’s able to get enough distance to loving mock some of the stylings of radical life without undercutting the values at its core. In doing so, it also highlights the challenges in how we actually get from here to whatever your personal conception of “the revolution” is. Real conflicts between characters’ beliefs, and real problems that don’t have easy solutions, stand side-by-side with the self-serious or minor stuff that can grow big enough to tank movements if left unaddressed, but more often than not are just the exasperating stuff of working together with other people.

Plenty of games have radical politics, but I don’t know that I’ve ever played a game that felt so much like it *lives* in them, one that feels safe enough in its audience and their beliefs to not be defensive or precious about the leftist project. The most present flaw of the future is that everyone can be kind of ridiculous, but they’re also earnestly trying to build a new world. They’re the kind of people I’ve rolled my eyes at in activist meetings, but whom I’ve still had enough common ground with to fight alongside. 

They’re largely kind to Harvey, in part due to a universal reverence for the elderly, but they’re not going to let his needs and desires dictate how things work anymore. Harvey is a caricature of a boomer, but there’s also real earnestness at the heart of his efforts to wrap up his life. He feels threatened and left behind by this world, and he’s also struggling with ramifications of aging that science can’t fix. Even when it’s played for laughs, it’s a relatable conflict: At some point, your generation just isn’t the main character anymore, and you have to step aside and let younger people give things a shot. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/09/futworkclas.jpeg)

Molleindustria/Aftermath

In many ways, the game feels perfectly aimed toward me, an anarchist in my mid-40s. More often than not I hang up the phone with my parents blaming them for why I’m fighting the fights I’m fighting, but I also get the side-eye when I walk into my familiar punk shows and bike repair collectives and don’t recognize any of the kids running things. While I didn’t come away from *Future?* with some new-found appreciation for boomers, I did see in Harvey a challenge I could relate to in my own experiences with people [younger than me](https://aftermath.site/lego-fortnite-cat-enters-his-queer-elder-era/). As anyone who scrolls social media too long or joins an activist project where they’re older than everyone can relate to, sometimes you just have no idea what the fuck anyone is talking about anymore. And you can be hard-headed and dismissive or a know-it-all in response, or you can try to understand and maybe grow a bit as a person. Maybe–as I remember doing at one particularly badly-organized queer conference decades ago, where I was an “elder” in my late 20s–you simply step aside and let people try, and maybe fail, on their own terms, growing from their mistakes as you did. 

But *Future? No Thanks!* is keen to remind you that you have to learn to live in the world around you. Not feeling left behind by the future means interrogating which of your beliefs are deeply-held and need sticking to, even in the face of pushback, and which are vestiges of a time or place that maybe it’s best to let go of so that you, and everyone, can get a little better. Going on this journey with someone whose beliefs are humorously abhorrent gave me just enough distance to think about how I’m doing that work in my own life and if I’m living up to my own standards. 

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/2026/09/futpope.jpeg)

Molleindustria/Aftermath

My run–dictated by the quests I completed–ended on a personal, human note that also left a lot of conflict in its wake, the way real life works. Along the way there were a lot of good jokes, very clever writing, and some exceptionally killer music (notably, there’s a fantastic busker I’d encourage you to visit frequently). *Future? No Thanks!* skillfully and hilariously melds the past, present, and future to encourage me to think about where I’m at and where I’m going with my own politics, while also reminding me that while yes, consensus is important, someone can just end the damn meeting already.

[‘Who’s Deciding The Fate Of This Game?’ The Secretive Process Of Getting A Game With Sexual Content On Steam‘You work six years on a game, you line up press and events for the launch, and then some guy at Valve clicks on a checkbox and blocks everything.’![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/icon/favicon4-06f5c857-c85b-40c2-b4f1-b65da36ff912.png)AftermathJay Castello![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/30/f5/30f5b1bb-84ee-4c26-b446-fb9a5e512994/content/images/thumbnail/Screenshot-2026-08-17-at-10.12.41---AM-1c2f5e5b-9583-450c-9a9b-79028654f4a3.png)](https://aftermath.site/steam-censorship-future-no-thanks-perfect-tides/)