Saudi’s Savvy about to pay $6 billion for a Bytedance-owned gaming studio
According to a recent report by the Financial Times, Saudi Arabia’s Savvy Games Group is in advanced negotiations to acquire Moonton, a game developer currently owned by China’s ByteDance, for a record $6 billion.
If successful, this would be one of the largest cross-border deals involving a Chinese gaming company. The potential agreement highlights Saudi Arabia’s growing ambition to become a major force in the global video game and esports industries.
ByteDance, best known as the owner of TikTok, has been scaling back its involvement in gaming. About a decade ago, the company invested heavily in an effort to compete with Tencent, China’s dominant gaming giant. It spent billions acquiring and supporting more than a dozen studios, including Shanghai-based Moonton, which it purchased in 2021 for $4 billion.
However, the company struggled to gain significant ground in the competitive gaming market, pushing it to begin cutting jobs in its gaming division in late 2023, signaling a shift in strategy and opening the door to a possible sale of Moonton.
Moonton is best known for developing Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, a free-to-play multiplayer fantasy battle game that has become especially popular in Southeast Asia’s esports scene. The game, which has been around for a decade and only recently launched in mainland China, attracts around 110 million monthly active players, underscoring its strong global following.
Savvy Games Group is backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and has been tasked with building a world-leading gaming and esports company. The group has already made several international investments, including a stake in Shanghai-based esports company VSPO, now rebranded as Hero Esports.
Savvy’s expansion is part of a broader initiative to diversify Saudi Arabia’s economy and strengthen its domestic technology sector. Savvy has already made significant acquisitions in the United States, including the purchase of mobile game developer Scopely and the acquisition of Pokémon Go and other titles from Niantic, further cementing its global gaming footprint.
