Saudi Arabia Now Owns a Big Slice of Gaming: EA, Pokémon GO and Mobile Legends

If you played Pokémon GO this morning, opened Monopoly GO! on the bus, queued for a ranked match in Mobile Legends or started a season of EA SPORTS FC, there is a good chance the money from your purchase ends up, one way or another, with the same owner: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

That is the result of one of the fastest shopping sprees the games business has ever seen. On August 4, 2026, a consortium led by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, completed its $55 billion purchase of Electronic Arts, taking about 93.4% of the company. Five months earlier, in March 2026, PIF's games company Savvy Games Group agreed to buy Moonton, the maker of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, from ByteDance for about $6 billion.

The plan behind the purchases

None of this is accidental. On September 29, 2022, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced a national games and esports strategy run by PIF through Savvy. Its stated goal is to make the kingdom a "global hub for the games and esports sector by 2030."

The plan came with a budget of about SAR 142 billion (roughly $38 billion), split into four programmes:

• SAR 50 billion to acquire and develop a leading game publisher
• SAR 70 billion for minority stakes in key companies
• SAR 20 billion for established companies in the sector
• SAR 2 billion for emerging companies

It also set targets for 2030: 250 game companies in Saudi Arabia, 39,000 jobs, and a SAR 50 billion contribution to the economy. Savvy itself was founded in November 2021, which makes it barely five years old.

Step one: esports and mobile

Savvy started with esports. In 2022 it bought ESL and FACEIT, two of the biggest names in competitive gaming, and merged them into ESL FACEIT Group (EFG). It has also invested in Hero Esports, which it describes as Asia's leading esports company.

The bigger move came in 2023, when Savvy bought Scopely, the Los Angeles publisher behind MONOPOLY GO!, for $4.9 billion. CEO Brian Ward has called Monopoly GO! "the most successful mobile game launch of all time." He likes to make the point about scale another way: if Scopely's players were a country, "they would be the third largest country in the world."

Scopely then became Savvy's buying arm in mobile:

• In 2025, it bought Niantic's games business, including Pokémon GO, Pikmin Bloom and Monster Hunter Now, for $3.5 billion. The deal closed on May 29, 2025.
• In March 2026, it bought Istanbul studio Loom Games for $1 billion. Loom makes Pixel Flow!, a puzzle game that launched at the end of 2025 and quickly reached seven-figure daily revenue.

Step two: Mobile Legends

The Moonton deal, reported on March 20, 2026, takes Savvy into a different part of the world. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang is a mobile MOBA (a team battle game in the style of League of Legends) with more than 1.5 billion downloads. It is strongest in Southeast Asia, where its MPL leagues and M-Series world championship fill arenas.

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, had bought Moonton in 2021 for about $4 billion to build a games business. It confirmed in 2024 that it was exploring a sale as it refocused on AI, and Tencent was named as a possible buyer before Savvy won. Moonton CEO Zhang Tunfan said the management structure would stay the same, and incentive plans for staff were planned. Ward said the deal strengthens Savvy's mobile division and expands its presence in esports.

The size of the deal shows up in industry data. Advisory firm Aream & Co counted $7.7 billion of games mergers and acquisitions in the first quarter of 2026, a total it said was inflated by the Moonton deal alone.

Step three: EA

PIF's EA story is older than most people think. The fund had been a minority investor in EA for more than five years before it led the buyout with Silver Lake and Affinity Partners. The deal was announced on September 29, 2025, exactly three years to the day after the national games strategy was launched.

It is also the most complicated piece. About $20 billion of the price was borrowed, and that debt now sits on EA. Bloomberg reported that EA told lenders it plans about $700 million of annual cost savings, and in October 2026 EA closed BioWare and cut about 400 jobs. (We explain the deal in detail in our EA buyout feature.)

By the numbers:

• SAR 142 billion: the 2022 strategy budget (about $38 billion)
• $4.9 billion: Scopely (2023)
• $3.5 billion: Niantic's games business (2025)
• $1 billion: Loom Games (2026)
• About $6 billion: Moonton (agreed 2026)
• $55 billion: Electronic Arts (completed August 2026)

Add up only the deals with published prices and the total passes $70 billion in under four years, before counting ESL, FACEIT and the minority investments. For comparison, that is slightly more than the roughly $69 billion Microsoft paid for Activision Blizzard, still the biggest single acquisition in games history. Moonton also brings spin-offs such as Magic Chess: Go Go, so the Mobile Legends universe Savvy is buying is bigger than one game.

Why it matters

Put simply, a single state investor now sits behind some of the most played games on the planet: the best-known location-based game (Pokémon GO), one of the most successful mobile board games (Monopoly GO!), Southeast Asia's favourite MOBA (Mobile Legends), and one of the world's biggest sports game series (EA SPORTS FC).

There are two ways to read that. Supporters point to the stability: Savvy says it lets its businesses "do what they do best," Moonton's leadership is staying, and Scopely has kept its management through two big acquisitions. Critics point to the concentration of so much influence over popular games in the hands of one government's investment fund.

For players, the most immediate effects are business decisions, not politics. Debt-funded owners tend to favour steady live games over risky new projects, which is exactly what EA's first private months have looked like. Mobile players are more likely to see continuity: Pokémon GO, Monopoly GO! and Mobile Legends are profitable services that their owners have every reason to keep running.

What to watch

• Moonton's closing. Watch for confirmation that the deal has completed and any changes to Mobile Legends' esports calendar.
• EA's restructuring. The cost target suggests more changes are coming.
• New targets. Savvy says it wants leading positions in genres where it has no presence yet, and Ward has said there is "much more to come from Scopely."
• The Korean and Japanese angle. The strategy sets aside SAR 70 billion for minority stakes, so investments in listed publishers, including in Asia, remain part of the plan.