Saudi Arabia Investing $38 Billion to Become Hub for the Video Game Industry - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 April 2023 / 5,653 Views
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF), a wealth fund chaired by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, is investing $38 billion to become a hub for the video game industry, according to a report from Bloomberg.
"We are now more of an esports company than a games company," said Savvy Gaming Group, a subsidiary of Saudi Arabia's PIF, Chief Executive Officer Brian Ward in a statement to Bloomberg. "What we’re doing this year is focusing more on game publishing and development."
Ward added, "We would like to use those investments to begin to work with these companies and ask how we can work together on publishing in (the Middle East and North Africa), run their esports businesses or develop new IP together.
"Part of our mandate is to help partners and other companies come to Saudi and choose Riyadh over some other place to establish a publishing business or distribution business to serve the region."
Savvy is looking to build up its resources and clout in video game development and publishing. This includes Savvy Games Studios, which has about 45 employees, and is developing a mobile game first, followed by a console game. Ward hopes it will grow into a top-tier studio, but admits "building a game studio from scratch is super hard."
Ward said one way to become a global entertainment hub by 2030 is to acquire studios or publishers, including internationally. He admits Electronic Arts would be "too big" for them as Savvy has around $13 billion to invest in acquiring a game publisher. He would consider taking another public game publisher private.
Saudi Arabia's PIF has invested in Nintendo, Tencent, Activision Blizzard, Embracer, Capcom, and Nexon. The public fund has invested in Nintendo multiple times to the point it now has an 8.26 percent stake in the gaming giant. The public fund is "the largest outside investor" in Nintendo.
Previous data also showed the public fund owns $2.9 billion of stock in Activision Blizzard, $1.7 billion in Electronic Arts stock, and $1.2 billion in Take-Two stock.
The Saudi Arabia's crown prince has a goal of making the economy of the country less reliable on oil.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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No one should want the Saudi Prince touching our industry, esp on this level. I’m sure the hypocritical gaming industry will spend little time talking about this and how upsetting it is, considering the egregious human rights violations committed by the Saudi royal family. But in America, it’s always virtue and morality only when convenient or self-aggrandizing.
First, approx 65% of our oil is produced domestically, and of the 35% of oil that’s imported, Saudi Arabia supplies 5-6%. It’s a pretty big reach to call me a hypocrite, bc I “buy oil from Saudi Arabia.”
Second, you’re talking about a fickle group of people that willingly choose to make massive ordeals about moral topics only when it is convenient and makes them look good. This includes people like Gregg Miller, who boycott Hogwarts Legacy, while entirely ignoring topics involving things that are most materially harmful and which will truly damage our industry—e.g. so many studios being bought up by Tencent and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia beheads gay and transgender people and egregiously suppresses women’s rights. Now, they are directly buying up our industry, and they will almost undoubtedly suppress their studios from creating LGBT characters, among likely many other things.
A sizeable percentage of Tencent’s employees are actual card-carrying members of the CCP, and the CCP commits human rights violations galore (see Uighur concentration camps and China’s Draconion approach to Covid control). Not to mention how they force our media companies to suppress black, gay, etc. characters in order for a product to release there. The same will happen with games released to the rest of the world by the many, many studios Tencent now owns.
Third, I will have a Tesla within a year. Could not responsibly purchase one up to now due to my $1600/mo student loan payment, which will end late 2023. Even if I wasn’t in a favorable financial situation, however, you’re comparing a person’s situation—where they have no choice but to buy gas—to journalists disingenuously flaunting their virtue? I’m not being mean back, but that is a massive stretch.
Rather they invest in being very far from gaming.
An ultraconservative dictatorship should not be touching any form of art or entertainment. Soon enough we'll have developers censoring themselves or being censored outright.
China
North Korea
Venezuela
Cuba
Iran
Russia
and several other countries in Africa and Asia laughed at this comment.
They probably can't because they have no possibilities to get videogame consoles.
Interesting movement for economy. I would like to see Microsoft opening studios and partnering with local studios so people from North Africa and the Middle East can bring more games telling their traditions, legends, stories and other interesting things about the region. Hopefully it works... for more Prince of Persia (and yes, I know it was Iranian developers).
Agreed. More diversity in games is better for everyone.
I don't mean different skin colors in the office of the developers in the US, Europe, or Japan. I mean, developers headquartered in different parts of the world, employing people from those parts of the world that have something different to contribute to the art of gaming.
Caveman
They will buy either Capcom or Ubisoft, I doubt that Embracer would sell and Nexon is valued at 20 billion
Capcom won't sell either.
Saudi Arabia has banned games from many of Capcom's biggest series (Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Devil May Cry, Dead Rising, etc). That would be a weird choice to buy.
