For anyone who’s been keeping an eye on the African game development space over the past five years, Maliyo Games is a familiar name. The Lagos-based studio has been on a quiet mission to train the next generation of African game makers, mostly through its flagship initiative, GameUp Africa. Since launching in 2020, the project has reached over 6,000 aspiring developers across the continent, giving many of them their very first real introduction to building games.
Now, the studio is taking a massive step in a new direction.
Maliyo Games has officially rebranded the initiative to GameUp Academy, signaling a complete overhaul of how the program works, who it caters to, and how students learn. The overhaul drops the strict five-month bootcamp format and replaces it with an always-on, self-paced learning setup powered by AI.
It’s a subtle change on paper, but in practice, it changes the entire dynamic of how talent is developed on the continent, and around the world.
The Problem With the Old Bootcamp Model
To understand why this rebrand matters, you have to look at how training programs traditionally run.
When GameUp Africa launched back in 2020, the goal was simple: take beginner-level developers and push them through an intensive, structured five-month bootcamp. Students had to commit hundreds of hours over fixed months, attending live sessions, finishing assignments on tight schedules, and working through rigid modules.
That structure worked well for a while, but it also created friction.
Five months is a long commitment, especially for young people juggling university degrees, side hustles, unstable power, and unpredictable internet access. If you fell behind in week four because of real-life issues, catching up by week six was almost impossible. A lot of capable people simply dropped off along the way, not because they lacked talent or interest, but because life got in the way.
Maliyo Games founder Hugo Obi addressed this head-on when talking about the shift. The team realized that traditional five-month commitments just don’t match how people consume information or manage their time today. Expecting students to lock themselves into a strict schedule for nearly half a year was turning out to be an unnecessary barrier.
People want flexibility. They want to log in, absorb a practical skill, build something, and step away without feeling like they’ve missed an irreplaceable live lecture.
Moving to an Always-On, Self-Paced Platform
That realization is what gave birth to GameUp Academy.
Instead of opening applications once a year for a single batch, the new setup operates as an always-on learning hub. Anyone can jump in, pick up where they left off, and learn at their own pace.
If you have ten hours a week to dedicate to learning Unity or asset design, you can speed through modules. If you only have two hours on weekends, the platform lets you work at that pace without penalizing you or locking you out of the cohort.
That doesn’t mean Maliyo is completely abandoning structured mentorship, though. Shorter, facilitated programs will still run alongside the self-paced platform, giving students access to live feedback and guided workshops when they need it. But the core learning engine will now run 24/7 in the background.
Going Global: Removing Geographic Constraints
Another major shift lies right inside the new name itself. Dropping “Africa” in favor of “Academy” isn’t about moving away from the studio’s roots, it’s about opening the doors to everyone.
When you name a program GameUp Africa, people outside the continent naturally assume it isn’t meant for them. But over the years, Maliyo noticed that the challenges facing entry-level game developers in Lagos, Nairobi, or Johannesburg aren’t actually all that different from those in Manila, São Paulo, or even parts of Eastern Europe. Beginners everywhere struggle with the same core hurdles: finding clear, practical roadmaps, getting good feedback, and figuring out how to build games that are actually market-ready.
By shifting to GameUp Academy, the team is deliberately removing those geographic assumptions. The identity and community of the original program stay intact, but the doors are now wide open for learners worldwide.
AI and Gamification at the Core
Perhaps the most interesting part of this platform transition is how heavily Maliyo is leaning into artificial intelligence and gamified learning mechanics.
In a traditional bootcamp, mentors spend endless hours doing routine tasks—answering basic coding questions, reviewing repetitive assignments, and pointing out simple syntax errors. That takes time away from deep, high-value mentorship.
By building AI directly into the learning platform, students can get real-time feedback on their work without waiting days for a human instructor to clear their queue. Whether it’s troubleshooting a script, refining game balance, or analyzing asset optimization, AI acts as an instant assistant sitting right next to the learner.
Alongside AI, gamification plays a big role in keeping students engaged. Learning to make games should feel like playing a game, with milestones, progress tracking, short feedback loops, and immediate rewards when you solve a practical problem.
What The Launch Rollout Looks Like
Maliyo Games isn’t opening the floodgates to millions of users on day one. Instead, they are taking a measured approach to testing the platform infrastructure.
The platform will officially go live before the end of September. To ensure the systems, server load, and AI features work as expected, it will first open exclusively to the 2026 cohort. Once that initial group pushes the platform through its paces and the engineering team fine-tunes the experience, access will open up globally to the general public.
It’s a smart move. Building an always-on digital academy sounds simple until thousands of users start rendering assets and running code checks simultaneously. Stress-testing with a controlled group gives them room to fix bugs before launching worldwide.
Why This Matters for the Broader Gaming Scene
For years, the biggest critique of emerging gaming markets has been the talent pipeline. The passion has always been there, but structured, accessible, and affordable game development education has been notoriously hard to come by.
Traditional university degrees in game design are often far too expensive or outdated by the time students graduate. On the flip side, piecing together random YouTube tutorials leaves huge gaps in fundamental knowledge.
By turning five years of hands-on training data into an always-on, AI-backed educational engine, Maliyo Games is building something that can actually scale. It lowers the entry bar for creators, removes rigid scheduling demands, and makes learning to build games as straightforward as opening an app on your phone.
If you’ve been thinking about getting into game development or want to track how the platform evolves, explore the GameUp Academy platform and secure your spot on the waitlist.