Last we heard of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) was early last month, when it completed the buyout of Electronic Arts (EA). More recently, it looks like executives at the sovereign wealth fund are looking to combine its recent acquisition with another, Savvy Games, to create a singular gaming giant. This could then be used as a single vehicle to make acquisitions, develop games and otherwise make use of the wider intellectual property library.
Bloomberg cites sources that say that combining the two would also ensure better coordination between PIF assets. That being said, the sources also say that the PIF executives have not made any final decisions, and the actual merger is unlikely to happen until Savvy Games completes its own acquisition of Chinese mobile games business Moonton, the company that develops and publishes Mobile Legends: Bang Bang. To be clear, both organisations have already agreed to the sale, and it’s now only a matter of finalising the sale.
The outlet previously reported that ByteDance, which itself acquired Moonton in 2021, had agreed to sell the studio to Savvy Games for a huge sum of US$6 billion (~RM24.25 billion). It is worth noting that Savvy is already the owner of Scopely, a California-based company, and has been since 2023. Under new ownership, the latter went on to buy out the gaming business of Niantic, which includes Pokemon Go, last year.
According to the report, this merging between EA and Savvy could also help bolster the former’s mobile gaming ambitions. While the company is probably better known for its PC and console games, it did have notoriety in the mobile space. Dungeon Keeper comes to mind, with its heavy-handed monetisation and typical employment of dark patterns in doing so. With that in mind, one can hope that bolstering in this case means improving the gameplay experience for players, and not the monetisation metrics for the companies.
(Source: Bloomberg)
