Players are encouraged to loot some of the world’s top museums in a new video game in which the main objective is to stage elaborate heists to repatriate stolen African artifacts.

A South African game designer, Nyamakop, recently announced the release of the game, titled “Relooted,” in which gamers join a heist crew that sets out to steal nearly 70 actual African artifacts from museums around the globe and return them to their nations of origin.

“Reclaim real African artifacts from Western museums in this African futurist heist game,” a description of the game on the Epic Games online marketplace reads. “Recruit crew members, plan escape routes, acquire the precious cargo, and bounce out of the joint as fast as you can.”

The game is set in an imagined near future in which political powers have brokered a “Transatlantic Returns Treaty,” which provides for items on public display to be returned to their countries of origin. Because of the loophole, though, the museums have begun moving the African artifacts from their galleries into storage.

“When life gives you lemons and museums pulling shady moves, it’s time to chuck the lemons back at life and try a new, stealthier form of diplomacy,” a description of the game reads.

In a press release for “Relooted,” the game’s creative director said his team spent two years researching the real-world artifacts used in the game.

“We looked for artifacts with great stories in terms of how they were looted,” Ben Myres said. “Why were they important to people? Just anything associated with them.”

Mr. Myres references the Ngadji drum, a wooden object made by the Pokomo people of Kenya that was traditionally used as a call for worship or to celebrate the reign of a new king. The drum was confiscated by the British in 1902 and remains in the British Museum collection, despite calls from Kenyan researchers for its return.

“The first Kenyan people to see it in the last 100 years were in the 2010s,” he said. “The person who saw the drum was a descendant of the king it was taken from originally. 

“So these aren’t artifacts that were just found in the dust and excavated by archaeologists. These were still active cultures.”

The game’s producers have faced backlash from critics who say that “Relooted” shorts players of engaging gameplay in favor of pushing an ideological agenda.

“We’ve officially moved into the ‘justified theft’ portion of the Marxist playbook,” a former gaming industry recruiter and controversial commentator, Jeff Tucker, said on his blog, Smash JT.

“This isn’t satire. This is what happens when DEI ideology and activist storytelling replaces actual developer creativity.”