Lagos Life Reactions: The Amazing Buzz that Hooked Nigerians
Lagos Life has taken over our timeline for two weeks now without permission. We can’t stop playing it, we can’t stop raving about it.
Technext reports that the game reached one million players in just three days. ChatGPT needed five days for that! Meanwhile, Nigerians have turned the whole thing into one giant gist session.
Everybody is a Lagosian now
Players meet strangers, buy land and run businesses. They even spend nights at Quilox and eat at Amala Shitta. All of these happen inside a browser.
You don’t need to download anything, so data wahala cannot stop you. You just click a link on X or TikTok, and you are in.
Naturally, Nigerians started cruising. Community reports say NEPA has taken light, so you must buy an inverter. Area boys also collect your money when your charisma stays low.
Players mostly joked about not wanting real-life struggles in the game. Yet the game gives them those struggles anyway. Na wa o.
When trillionaires showed up
Then the money drama began. Hacked accounts with trillion-naira balances started springing up. The team wiped those balances and restored the legitimate balances.
Imagine owning trillions in the game while having only ₦2,000 in real life. Some players lived that dream for a few days.
However, the developers are now adding income tax. So even virtual Nigerians cannot escape the tax man.
The spectators who never played Lagos Life
Then we have some people who have not opened the game, yet they already love it. One Nigerian user admitted to seeing only screenshots before falling in love with the game.
Another commenter joked that the poster might be the creator in disguise. Nothing links that poster to the developer, though. Typical Nigerian suspicion.
Not everybody is laughing
Then the gist turned sour on 6 October. The Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) reported that the home page carried ads for a site pimping sex workers.
FIJ also found that ad slots cost between ₦18,000 and ₦500,000 weekly. Furthermore, it cited Nigerian laws that criminalize pimping.
In response to that, the game terms were updated to only allow submission of lawful materials. They also let the team remove any ad that goes against the rule. Meanwhile, the same terms restrict the game to players aged 18 and above.
Watch out for “withdraw your millions” people
A scam also started with people asking players to pay a fee to withdraw their game money to their bank account. Game naira has no cash value, according to the official terms. You cannot withdraw it to your bank account.
Therefore, anybody who asks for ₦5,000 to help you withdraw your Lagos Life millions is trying to scam you. Also, ignore random APK links. The game runs in a browser.
Money is following the hype
Investors have noticed hype too. On 9 October, Vatar, the company behind the game, announced a $500,000 angel round. The reported valuation is $10 million.
Abuja and Port Harcourt also joined Lagos on 6 October. Not bad for a game Shalom Rayhamen built in under 12 hours. Our earlier piece on Shalom Rayhamen tells that full story.
Our take on Lagos Life
The jokes are harmless, and the hype is deserved. However, the ads are a real problem. A game this popular must check who pays to reach millions of players.
Moreover, fame like this always attracts scammers. Technext also warns that a million players is not yet a million regulars. So the real test starts after the noise dies down.
If a game can copy Lagos this well, who should protect the players inside it: the developer, the advertisers, or us?
