Games That Satirize Big Tech (and What Each One Mocks)
Updated October 2, 2026
Which games actually satirize big tech?
Updated September 2026.
The games that satirize big tech best are Hypnospace Outlaw (the platform and the people paid to police it), Going Under (startup culture), Human Resource Machine (automation), Watch Dogs 2 (Silicon Valley’s giants), The Last Worker (the warehouse behind the checkout button) and Do Not Feed the Monkeys (surveillance). If you only play one, play Hypnospace Outlaw.
What separates them is the target. “Satire of tech” is too loose to be useful, because each of these picks a different victim: the platform, the office, the job, the giants, the warehouse, the user, the feed. The table below sorts them by that.
A tech satire game is a game that makes a technology company, its products or its working culture the butt of the joke, usually by making you work inside the system it mocks rather than watch it from outside.
That last clause is the reason these work as games instead of sketches. In most of them you are an employee: an intern, a moderator, a picker, a programmer, a club member with a login. The joke lands because you are doing the job well.
What is each game making fun of?
| Game | What the joke targets | Released | Regular price (as of September 2026) | Main story, HowLongToBeat | Steam reviews (as of September 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hypnospace Outlaw | The platform: a company that owns the network and pays you to police it | 2019 | $19.99 | 5.9 hours | 5,566 |
| Going Under | The office: startups, interns, gig apps, crypto, dating sites | 2020 | $24.99 | 9.5 hours | 4,171 |
| Human Resource Machine | The job: you program office workers while the machines come for your job | 2015 | $14.99 | 4.4 hours | 4,702 |
| Watch Dogs 2 | The giants: search, social and smart-home companies in San Francisco | 2016 | $49.99 | 19.5 hours | 102,574 |
| The Last Worker | The logistics: the last human picker in an automated retail warehouse | 2023 | $19.99 | 4.3 hours | 75 |
| Do Not Feed the Monkeys | The user: you, watching strangers through hacked cameras | 2018 | $15.99 | 3.8 hours | 12,762 |
| Headliner: NoviNews | The feed: one editor deciding what a whole city reads each day | 2018 | $13.99 | 2.3 hours | 817 |
Prices are Steam’s regular US prices, not sale prices. Lengths are HowLongToBeat’s “Main Story” averages for Hypnospace Outlaw, Going Under, Human Resource Machine, Watch Dogs 2, The Last Worker, Do Not Feed the Monkeys and Headliner: NoviNews. The Last Worker’s 75 reviews are a small sample; weigh it accordingly.
Which of these games is the best tech satire?
Hypnospace Outlaw is the best tech satire on this list, because it is the only one where the platform, its users and your own job are all targets at once.
Hypnospace Outlaw: the platform
Hypnospace Outlaw is the sharpest game here about who owns the internet and who does its dirty work. It is set in an alternate 1999 where people browse a network while they sleep, and you play an Enforcer employed by the company that runs it, flagging pages for copyright, harassment and anything else the company decides is harmful (Wikipedia). The pages you moderate are strange and very funny: fan pages, amateur music, personal home pages built with more enthusiasm than skill. The job turns into detective work and puzzle-solving, and the whole time you are enforcing the company’s rules on its users. It released in March 2019 (as of September 2026 it sits at 5,566 Steam reviews) and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Going Under: the office
Going Under is the funniest game here about startup culture itself. It is a roguelite dungeon crawler where failed startups sink underground and their staff turn into monsters, and you, an unpaid intern at a fizzy drink startup called Fizzle, clear them out so your bosses can repossess the assets (Steam). The dungeons are themed on gig work, dating apps and cryptocurrency; PC Gamer singled out its crypto dungeon, a mine full of skeletons. You fight with whatever office junk is lying around. The combat is a real roguelite, so expect to die a lot before the jokes run out. Windows only on Steam.
Human Resource Machine: the job
Human Resource Machine is the quietest satire here and the most pointed about automation. Each level is a task your boss hands you, and you solve it by programming a little office worker; succeed and you are promoted to another year in the building. The store page puts the joke in one line: “The machines are coming… for your job.” It is a genuine programming puzzle game from Tomorrow Corporation, the studio behind World of Goo, and it is kind to people who have never coded.
Watch Dogs 2: the giants
Watch Dogs 2 is the only big-budget game on the list, and the one that names its targets most openly. It is an open-world hacking game set in San Francisco, and its fictional search engine, social network and smart-home companies are thin disguises that TechCrunch and GamesBeat both read as a direct swipe at the Valley. GamesBeat points to Nudle, a search giant whose maps you check on every mission, and Haum, a smart-home company caught selling data from home monitoring systems. It is also the longest here by a wide margin, 19.5 hours of main story on HowLongToBeat.
The Last Worker: the logistics
The Last Worker is about the warehouse nobody sees when they press “buy”. You play Kurt, the last human employee at the fulfilment centre of a retailer called Jüngle, picking boxes from a hover cart while the robots take over everything else. The premise is sharp and the execution is uneven: its Steam reviews are Mixed (as of September 2026), and Nintendo Life headlined its review “Well-Packaged Satire That Doesn’t Always Deliver”. Play it for the setting, not the script.
Do Not Feed the Monkeys: the user
Do Not Feed the Monkeys turns the camera around and makes the user the target. You join a club that watches strangers through surveillance cameras and compromised webcams, and the one rule is that you must never interfere (Steam). You are also stuck in a dull job and a run-down flat, so the game keeps asking how much of someone else’s life you will sell to improve yours.
Headliner: NoviNews: the feed
Headliner: NoviNews is the one game here about media rather than software, and it earns its place because its subject is what a feed does to the people reading it. You are an editor with two stamps, approve and reject, and every evening you walk home through a city shaped by what you published that day. It is the shortest game on the list at 2.3 hours, and it is built to be replayed for different endings.
What do these games not cover?
None of them put you in the investor’s seat. Going Under comes closest, since part of its story is what Fizzle’s parent company, the drone shipping empire Cubicle, actually wants, and Startup Panic plays the founder side straight as a management sim. If you want to run the company rather than suffer under it, our list of games where you run a tech company covers that side.
The other gap is the machine’s point of view. Portal’s Aperture Science is corporate science satire told from the test chamber, and a whole shelf of games puts you in the role of the program itself; that is its own list, games where you play as the AI. The browser classic that does it with nothing but numbers is Universal Paperclips, which gets its own games like Universal Paperclips list.
Where our game fits
Our own game, Sam, We Talked About This, sits beside this list rather than on it. It is an idle incremental game: you scrape whatever the internet has, train text, image and video models on it, rack those models to win subscribers, and turn the subscribers into cash for more disks, bigger machines and a bigger crew. Every game above puts its joke in a story you read or a job you do; Sam puts it in a loop that feeds itself, speeds up, and never runs out of data to eat, with AGI waiting at the end. It is unreleased, due on Steam in Q1 2027, so there is nothing to point at yet beyond its Steam page. If a joke told in numbers is your kind of joke, our list of funny idle games is the better next stop.
Frequently asked questions
Is Going Under about real tech companies? No. Fizzle and its parent company are invented, and the dungeons parody types of startup (gig apps, dating sites, crypto) rather than named firms. Watch Dogs 2 is the game on this list whose fake companies map most closely onto real ones.
Which tech satire game is the shortest? Headliner: NoviNews, at about 2.3 hours of main story on HowLongToBeat (as of September 2026). Do Not Feed the Monkeys is next at 3.8 hours. Both are built for more than one playthrough, since different choices lead to different endings.
Which of these games run on a Mac? Four do. Hypnospace Outlaw, Human Resource Machine, Do Not Feed the Monkeys and Headliner: NoviNews all list macOS on Steam (as of September 2026). Going Under, Watch Dogs 2 and The Last Worker are Windows only there.
Is there a tech satire game you do not have to be good at? Yes. Headliner: NoviNews, Hypnospace Outlaw and Do Not Feed the Monkeys have no combat and no reflex tests; you read, click and decide. Going Under and Watch Dogs 2 are the two built around action combat.
Key takeaways
- Hypnospace Outlaw is the best pick: the platform, the users and your own job are all part of the joke.
- Going Under covers startup culture, Human Resource Machine covers automation, Watch Dogs 2 covers the giants, The Last Worker covers the warehouse, Do Not Feed the Monkeys covers surveillance, Headliner: NoviNews covers the feed.
- Every game here makes you an employee of the thing it mocks, which is why the satire sticks.
- Nothing on the list is really about investors; for the founder’s chair, look at tech company sims instead.
