Relooted, which made its debut last week during the Summer Game Fest-adjacent Day of the Devs showcase, immediately turned heads. Its Killmonger-approved premise confronts one of the most uncomfortable truths undergirding Western society: We stole a lot of stuff! Land and lives, mainly, but as an extension of that, artifacts — precious pieces of the histories empires like the US and UK snuffed out. In Relooted, your crack team of liberators from a plethora of different African countries heists them back.
The game’s dev team is composed of people from African countries like Lesotho, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Tanzania, but during Summer Game Fest’s multi-day, demo-centric Play Days event, creative director Ben Myres, who is white and was raised in South Africa, manned the booth alone. This was not always the plan: Myres was originally going to be accompanied by another developer from South-Africa-based studio Nyamakop, whom Aftermath has granted anonymity due to their concerns that speaking out might exacerbate the challenges they’ve already faced entering the United States.
“I don't enjoy really long flights, and I am very aware of the current political climate in the US, especially towards South Africa,” the Nyamakop developer who was unable to attend SGF told Aftermath. “However, I was very keen on being present at SGF for this because it is a once in a lifetime announcement for a project that I am very passionate about and have seen so much of the team pour themselves into for years.”
In the past, this developer said, they have managed to acquire a US visa “without any issue,” and have never stayed past their departure date or breached any terms within the country. But this time around, none of that mattered. While the consulate in South Africa allowed the developer to answer a few questions about the purpose of their stay – and, to support their responses, they brought along documents from relevant and highly reputable sources – they were immediately denied.
“I was definitely more prepared than the last time [I came to the US] and had even stronger motivations for travel and return,” they said. “Because time was short and I did not want to cause any delays, I ensured to carry as many supporting documents as I could. However, that did not matter because I was quickly denied under 214(b) without any of my documents even being looked at.”
According to the US Department of State, a 214(b) denial means that an applicant “did not overcome the presumption of immigrant intent, required by law, by sufficiently demonstrating that you have strong ties to your home country that will compel you to leave the United States at the end of your temporary stay.” In other words, they’re worried that non-residents will overstay their welcome, perhaps permanently.
On average, over one million visas are denied per year under section 214(b), accompanied by vague explanations and no appeal process. Those who’ve been rejected can reapply, but if they’re like the Nyamakop developer – who already dotted their Is and crossed their Ts to the fullest extent of their ability – it can be hard to know where to start.
“I have no problem with being rejected if a valid reason is provided,” the developer said. “It would at least make it easier to get refunded for travel insurance.”
The Nyamakop developer said they weren’t alone in having trouble.
“At least three people before me in the queue were denied without having their documents looked at,” they said. “In fact, as I left the consulate, someone else who had their visa approved with no issue, who had no travel history and did not provide concrete travel plans, asked me if I noticed what was happening inside. You can probably guess what the main difference between myself and this other applicant is.”
You can probably guess what the main difference between myself and this other applicant is.
Myres believes he was only able to attend SGF on behalf of Nyamakop because of his unique history: While he was born in Australia, his parents moved to South Africa when he was just six months old. Due to their histories and his own, he possesses an Australian passport, a South African passport, and a British passport. This has repeatedly come in handy for Nyamakop, which – even prior to the past few years’ documented increase in refusal rates of visas from African countries – faced difficulties when it came to visiting Western countries.
"We had the same problem on our previous project where, if I didn't have a British passport, basically our company wouldn't exist,” Myres told Aftermath. “Because if you don't have enough lead time to go to important events, you just can't get a visa from an African country. And on [Relooted] specifically, it's kind of fucked up to be making a game about reclaiming African artifacts that are in Western countries, and Africans [on the team] can't even visit those artifacts. Hundreds of dollars in visa application fees, and then it might get declined. Thousands of dollars for accommodations and flights just to even visit your own cultural heritage, and that's a best-case scenario. But in this case, most of the people on the continent can't even get a visa to travel [to the United States]."
You will not be surprised to learn, then, that Myres and company had other grand plans that were also quashed by visa woes.
"We were trying to get our narrative director to come [to SGF] as well, but she's going to Sweden, and basically her passport was stuck in Kenya at the Swedish embassy, because the Swedish embassy doesn't have an embassy in South Africa,” Myres said. “So the passport had to go to Kenya, and it was there for literally a month. So she didn't have a passport. She actually had a 10-year visa, so she should come, but trying to get to Europe made her unable to come to the US. She's only gonna get a passport tomorrow – six weeks later. There's no winning."
It should be noted that South Africa – with a population of 4.5 million white residents compared to thousands in other African countries – boasts the fourth lowest US visa refusal rate of the 54 countries on the African continent. Still grappling with a long, bloody history of colonialism and apartheid, South Africa has recently become a rhetorical cudgel wielded by the likes of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who baselessly and cynically claim that “white genocide” is ravaging a country where, according to Reuters, the majority of murder victims are Black and, despite making up less than eight percent of the population, white people control around three-fourths of privately owned farmland. As per usual, observable reality has not moved Trump and his cronies, who this week used a firebombing attack in Boulder, Colorado as an excuse to enact a travel ban that targets countries in Africa and the Middle East – despite the fact that the man charged for the attack is from Egypt, which is not on the list.
"You've got some white South African asylum seekers in [the US] now, because apparently there's a white genocide going on," said Myres. "It's pretty messed up that people lying about being genocided can get a visa to come to your country, but actual people who have no interest in staying here – just coming for the event – can't get a visa. It's incredibly fucked up and unbelievable."
