Saudi’s Game Company Savvy Looks At Expanding In China 

Savvy is owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and its CEO Brian Ward said that the company is exploring international companies to partner with for commercial as well as strategic purposes, and that China was a particularly attractive target.  

Saudi Arabia’s video game company, Savvy Games Group, has turned towards the Chinese market for inspiration as it considers setting up shop in Asia’s largest economy. Savvy’s Vice Chairman, Saudi Prince Faisal bin Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, said during his recent visit to Shanghai that China was a viable market for the video game company, not only due to its vast customer base but also because of its talent pool. 

The Prince highlighted that gaming and esports thrive in China without any international market, citing the success of the shooting game Delta Force, developed by Tencent Holdings, which garnered nearly 13 million daily active users mere months after its debut in China. 

Savvy is owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, and its CEO, Brian Ward, said that the company is exploring partnerships with international companies for both commercial and strategic purposes, and that China is a particularly attractive target. He said that, along with being one of the biggest global markets and home to a massive talent pool, it also has some genres of games that are unheard of in any other part of the world. 

Ward also confirmed that Savvy is exploring new partnerships and also seeks to make new investments in local markets, suggesting that no new deals would be announced anytime soon, and refrained from providing any further details. Savvy’s international ambitions align with Saudi Vision 2030 to make the Kingdom into a global hub for gaming and esports. 

Launched in 2016, Saudi Vision 2030 is part of the Kingdom’s initiative to diversify the economy and reduce its dependence on oil. As part of Vision 2030, policymakers and Riyadh officials aim to create 39,000 local video gaming jobs and contribute $13.3 billion to the national GDP. 

Savvy was established by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) in 2021 and has made investments in many globally renowned game studios, like the US-based Activision Blizzard and Scopely and Japan’s Nintendo and Capcom. The company also announced recently that it was acquiring US video gaming giant Electronic Arts, which develops games like The Sims, in a $55 billion deal involving a group of investors, including the PIF. This marks the second-largest deal in the video game industry. 

According to a Financial Times report, industry experts are closely monitoring Savvy’s M&A expansion plans, especially after Ward announced in September that the company was looking for its next ‘multi-million dollar deal’ in China or other Asian markets. The company’s last venture in the Chinese gaming industry was in 2023, when, in hopes of breaking into the Asian market, it acquired a 30% stake in Tencent-backed Hero Esports for $265 million. 

Ward explained that Savvy sees great potential outside ‘mature Western markets’, particularly in emerging Asian markets. He also said that there are a lot more opportunities in hardcore game genres, as opposed to casual ones, adding that the company was interested in personal-computer and console games. 

A gaming enthusiast himself, Prince Faisal said that Black Myth: Wukong was one of the best games he has ever played, and that it has partly inspired Savvy to develop self-produced AAA titles. Produced by Chinese startup Game Science, Black Myth has received much popularity and critical acclaim as it is an action role-playing game. The Prince also said that many young Saudi men and women are interested in developing games, and that is the catalyst the industry needs to one day create something like Black Myth. 

This year marks the 35^th anniversary of diplomatic ties between China and Saudi Arabia, and bringing forth collaborations in often overlooked fields like the gaming sector is certainly a positive step towards improving bilateral ties, and also contributes to Vision 2030.