Gardens Secures 70 Million Funding Shared World Fantasy Game [2026 Update]

As originally reported by VGC, independent game studio Gardens Interactive has officially closed a landmark $70 million Series A funding round to accelerate development on its unannounced shared-world fantasy title. Founded by industry veterans behind critically acclaimed narrative hits such as What Remains of Edith Finch, Journey, and Sky: Children of the Light, the studio aims to redefine cooperative multiplayer interactions through a novel 'strandbox' framework. This major cash infusion, led by prominent venture capital firms, will expand Gardens' core engineering, narrative, and live-operations infrastructure to support a persistent online ecosystem. The funding milestone comes amid broader market shifts where major publishers are reinvesting in community-centric, high-agency online worlds. Much like recent ecosystem shifts seen in the , Gardens intends to blend emergent cooperative mechanics with long-term live-service retention. Studio leadership confirmed that the funding ensures financial independence while scaling their proprietary world-building tools for global deployment across PC and console platforms.