Vetkoek Studios Builds Global Ambitions With Taxi, Spinners Games

What changed

South African game studio Vetkoek Studios, founded by former Wits students Eric Gardiner and Mamello Raboroko, has been named among the top 15 finalists in the 2026 Création Africa seven-month incubation and immersion programme, hosted by the French Institute of South Africa.

The studio’s taxi game, Taxi Ranked, has passed 500,000 downloads. Vetkoek is also developing a car game based on the South African TV series Spinners and has launched a service creating corporate safety-training games.

Why it matters

Vetkoek’s rise began with a 2022 Wits competition, where Gardiner and Raboroko entered a taxi-game prototype with two classmates and won. Support from that prize helped them release Taxi Ranked: a bright, stylised game about driving a customisable taxi, dodging potholes, collecting passengers and escaping police.

Its details are deliberately local. Billboards advertise NikNaks and Ouma Rusks. Characters speak in South African colloquialisms. That gives the game something global studios cannot easily manufacture: a setting that feels lived in rather than decorated.

The studio is now trying to turn that local identity into a broader business. Aquabots, released on Roblox with a wildlife nonprofit, teaches younger players about coral reefs and marine conservation. The planned Spinners game aims to carry South Africa’s spinning motorsport culture to players who know drifting and cars but may not know spinning.

Vetkoek is also building a route into training work. Its new corporate offering will create simulations that let employees practise safety procedures before entering more dangerous real-world environments.

The harder test is money. Game development takes time, and studios need further funding before a project is finished. Création Africa may open new opportunities, but what support will lead to in funding, partnerships or releases is not yet clear.

The company’s answer includes a Roblox accelerator for unemployed and part-time young developers. Six winners will receive R5,000, while the programme trains participants to develop and publish their own games. Gardiner says the ambition is to make Vetkoek both a profitable studio and a structure that helps more young people build independent careers.

That makes the next phase bigger than one successful taxi game. Vetkoek is testing whether distinctly South African stories can travel, while building the skills and business around them at home.