The Deals Are Back: Games M&A Hits Its Busiest Level Since 2022
Layoffs dominated the headlines, but behind them the games business has been buying and selling at its fastest pace in four years. The biggest deals of 2026, the IPO comeback and what the money is chasing.
If 2026 has felt like a year of shrinking, the deal-makers would like a word. Behind the layoffs, the games business has been buying, selling and listing companies at a pace not seen since the pandemic boom.
According to advisory firm Aream & Co, there were 54 games mergers and acquisitions worth $2.3 billion in the second quarter of 2026, the highest deal count since 2022. The first quarter was even bigger by value, at $7.7 billion, though one deal did most of the work: Savvy Games Group's roughly $6 billion agreement to buy Moonton, the maker of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, from ByteDance.
The biggest deals of the year
Here are the headline transactions so far in 2026:
- Electronic Arts, about $55 billion. The take-private by a consortium led by Saudi Arabia's PIF closed on August 4. (See our EA feature.)
- Moonton, about $6 billion. Savvy agreed in March to buy the studio ByteDance had bought for about $4 billion in 2021.
- Loom Games, $1 billion. Savvy-owned Scopely bought the Istanbul maker of the puzzle hit Pixel Flow! in March.
- Wemade, about ₩920 billion. Founder Park Kwan-ho agreed in June to sell his 39.33% stake to China-linked NeoPulse. (Wemade story.)
- JustPlay, $289 million, and Nazara's controlling stake in Bluetile, $201 million.
- Playstack, acquired by TPG|imc for $168 million.
Hollywood is in the mix too. On October 6, Paramount closed its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, relaunching as Skydance. That puts Warner Bros. Games, home of NetherRealm and other studios, under the same roof as Paramount's own games group.
The IPO comeback
After a long drought, game companies are going public again. In the second quarter, Aream counted 25 IPOs raising $1.7 billion, up 72% in value and 67% in count from a year earlier.
Ad-tech company Liftoff completed its listing, and Indian puzzle maker PlaySimple announced plans for its own IPO. Private investment also surged to about $3.1 billion across 108 deals, roughly six times the year before, though most of that went to companies next to gaming rather than game studios: AppsFlyer raised $1 billion, and AI start-ups including General Intuition, Odyssey and Decart together raised more than $930 million.
Why buyers are back
Three forces explain the rebound.
Cheap targets. Many listed game companies have seen their share prices fall. Aream found that mobile-first Asian publishers were down 37% to 42% this year and Western ones 13%, while large, diversified companies were up 24%. Big, well-funded buyers can pick up studios for less than they would have paid a few years ago.
Patient capital. State-backed and private investors, led by Saudi Arabia's PIF and Savvy, are willing to make large, long-term bets. They were behind the two biggest deals of the year.
AI and tools. Much of the private money is flowing into AI and the infrastructure around games, not into making games themselves.
Why it matters
The return of deals is good news and bad news at once. More buyers means more exits for founders and more funding for studios. But it also means the industry is consolidating into fewer, bigger owners, several of them with large debts or state backing. Our layoffs round-up shows what can happen after a big deal closes.
What to watch
- Moonton's closing and the next move from Savvy and Scopely.
- Skydance's plans for Warner Bros. Games.
- PlaySimple's IPO, a test of whether public markets want more game companies.