Savvy Games-Scopely: Game on

The mobile-video-game market is big business, one worth over $91 billion in 2023 and expected to be worth around $150 billion in five years’ time, according to figures published by Mordon Intelligence, which cites increased smartphone usage and hardware capabilities, in addition to the rise of the micro-transaction model of continual in-game purchases, as reasons for the sector’s growth.   

In July, Savvy Games Group, a division of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), paid $4.9 billion for Los Angeles based games developer, Scopely. The move is part of Saudi Arabia’s National Gaming and Esports Strategy, which aims to see the sector contribute $13.3 billion to the Kingdom’s GDP by 2030.

Savvy Games’ acquisition of Scopely – developer of the popular mobile app games Monopoly Go and Star Trek Fleet Command – is part of the trend of Gulf states investing in the video-game industry, and indeed the wider pattern of countries in the region seeking to diversify their economies via sovereign wealth funds.  

Scopely passed the one-billion-dollar lifetime revenue mark in 2019

Founded in 2011, Scopely has grown to become one of the biggest publishers of mobile games, passing the one-billion-dollar lifetime revenue mark in 2019. Over the past decade it has acquired a number of rival mobile-game studios including Digit, Ireland’s largest games developer, in 2019, and fellow Los Angeles video game company FoxNext Games a year later.

Of the takeover, Scopely co-CEO Javier Ferreira said the following: “As part of the Savvy Games Group portfolio, we will be able to harness the collective power of our creativity, dedication to innovation and world-class talent to shape the future of games [and] continue to build one of the world’s most diversified mobile-first games companies.”

Gaming Mecca
The Gulf region is fast becoming a global hub of the mobile gaming and esports industries. Chinese giant Tencent Games has established a regional base in Dubai’s Internet City, and the second annual Dubai Esports and Games Festival took place in 2023, which saw 1,800 industry experts from around the world attend the GameExpo Summit. Meanwhile Riyadh is set to host the inaugural Esports World Cup in the summer of 2024, two years after Savvy acquired rival esports companies ESL and FACEIT for $1.5bn.

Over the past few years PIF has made a number of strategic investments in the traditional video-game industry as well. In 2022, it acquired a 5% stake (worth $2.98 billion) in Nintendo, arguably the world’s best-known and most prestigious video game company. It also owns minority stakes in Capcom, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive.