Saudi Arabia has recently invested a lot in the gaming industry through its Public Investment Fund (PIF). They own 96% of SNK, the historic Japanese company behind franchises like Metal Slug, Fatal Fury, The King of Fighters, and Samurai Shodown, as well as minority stakes in much larger companies like CAPCOM and Nexon (around 5% each), Nintendo (8%, with a recent increase earlier this year), and Embracer Group (8.1%), as well as undisclosed minority stakes in Take-Two Interactive, Activision Blizzard, and Electronic Arts.
Saudi Arabia’s main proxy in the gaming industry is the Savvy Gaming Group, a subsidiary fully owned by the Public Investment Fund and led by crown prince Mohammed bin Salman himself. Beyond the aforementioned investments, the Savvy Gaming Group had focused on expanding in the eSports side of the industry, though with eSports struggling, it seems like they are about to pivot into creating a full-fledged gaming hub in Saudi Arabia thanks to a $38 billion warchest.
Speaking to Bloomberg during the recent Game Developers Conference, Savvy Gaming Group CEO Brian Ward stated:
We are now more of an esports company than a games company. The engagement in esports is still off the hook. It’s fantastic. It’s just that the monetization doesn’t match the engagement.
What we’re doing this year is focusing more on game publishing and development. 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 Arabia and choose Riyadh over some other place to establish a publishing business or distribution business to serve the region.
Analysts from Niko Partners believe there are around 21 million videogamers in Saudi Arabia, nearly 60% of the entire population, with further growth expected for the entire Middle East and North Africa region in the next few years.
Of course, it won’t be easy to build a whole game studio from scratch, as Ward admitted to Bloomberg. Savvy Games Studios was created for that purpose, with goals to create a mobile game first and a console game at a later date, but it still only has around 45 employees.
Saudi Arabia also notoriously faces skepticism and controversy due to the country’s poor human rights, not to mention the alleged involvement in the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
