Lual Mayen grew up as a refugee in Uganda. And now he is a game developer.
Lual Mayen grew up as a refugee in Uganda. And now he is a game developer.
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Unity supports Lual Mayen’s tech center for refugees in Uganda

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 8 min

For 22 years of his life, Lual Mayen lived in a refugee camp in northern Uganda. His parents fled from South Sudan and its decades-long civil war. Against all odds, he made a mobile game about peace, and it was his ticket to a new life. He migrated to Washington, D.C., and became a game developer.

While Mayen is still trying to make it in games, he has already done what most successful people don’t do until much later in life. He has set up the charity Lual Mayen Foundation to help refugees. And game engine maker Unity Technologies has partnered with the foundation to fund a tech center for refugees at the vast refugee camp in Uganda where Mayen grew up.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.