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Relooted: the South African video game where players take back artefacts from western museums

Creators say they’re offering Africans a ‘hopeful, utopian feeling’ of retrieving objects looted by colonial armies

A new South African video game lets players take back African artefacts held in western museums in a series of heists, amid a growing campaign to repatriate treasures looted by colonial armies.

Players of Relooted become South African sports scientist and parkour expert Nomali, as she leaps and dives through museums to retrieve 70 real objects. They include an Asante gold mask that was taken by the British army when it destroyed the Asante empire’s capital, Kumasi, and is now in the Wallace Collection in London. Another object is the skull of the Tanzanian king Mangi Meli, which was taken to Germany after its colonial regime executed him in 1900.

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© Photograph: Nyamakop

© Photograph: Nyamakop

© Photograph: Nyamakop

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Sega co-founder David Rosen dies aged 95

Rosen, who led Sega from the 1960s into the 90s and who died on Christmas Day, was a hugely important figure in the history of arcade and home gaming

It is difficult to think of a more influential figure in the arcade game industry than David Rosen, who has died aged 95. The co-founder of Sega, who remained a director of the company until 1996, was instrumental in the birth and rise of the video game business in Japan, and in the 1980s and 90s oversaw the establishment of Sega of America and the huge success of the Mega Drive console.

As a US Air Force pilot during the Korean war, Rosen found himself stationed in Japan, and once the conflict was over, he stayed on, intrigued by the country and seeing possibilities in its recovering economy. In 1954 he set up Rosen Enterprises and noticing that Japanese civilians now required an increasing number of new ID cards he started importing photo booths from the US to answer the demand. From here he expanded to pinball tables and other coin-operated machines, importing them for installation in shops, restaurants and cinemas. In 1965, he merged the company with another importer, Nihon Goraku Bussan, whose coin-op business Service Games was shortened to Sega for the new venture.

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© Photograph: AAMA - American Amusement Machine Association

© Photograph: AAMA - American Amusement Machine Association

© Photograph: AAMA - American Amusement Machine Association

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Roblox to block children from talking to adult strangers after string of lawsuits

Gaming platform to use facial age estimation to limit chats to similar age groups, as allegations of grooming grow

The online games platform Roblox is to start blocking children from talking to adult and much older teen strangers from next month as it faces fresh lawsuits alleging it has been exploited by predators to groom children as young as seven.

Roblox has reached 150 million daily players of games including viral hits Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot but has been hit by legal claims alleging the system’s design has made “children easy prey for paedophiles”.

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© Photograph: Roblox

© Photograph: Roblox

© Photograph: Roblox

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