The Saudi video game investment, development, publishing, and esports company Savvy Games plans to expand further according to its CEO Brian Ward.
The businessman talked to Arab News mentioning that 2025 is going to be a “very exciting year” for the company.
Not only it’s the year of the first edition of the official Olympic Esports Games in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, but the company appears to have further investment plans in motion.
While Ward kept on the vague side, he mentioned that Savvy expects to announce a “major investment or acquisition, hopefully in a top team or publisher” the goal is to bring another great game to the company’s portfolio.
“First of all, on the esports side, we have the inaugural Olympic Esports Games here in Riyadh, sometime later in the second half of the year. So, a huge tournament, the first official addition to the Olympic movement since the Winter Games in 1928.
On the game development and publishing side, we expect to be able to announce another major investment or acquisition, hopefully in a top team or publisher that can bring another great game to our portfolio.”
Ward also added that he expected all the stakeholders in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to create “great incentives” that would draw foreign investment and jobs to the country, on top of training and development programs to start with the objective of developing skills among Saudi developers.
Savvy Games was established in 2021 by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund under the patronage of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Since then, it has acquired stakes in Nintendo, Take-Two, Electronic Arts, Nexon, Capcom, and Embracer and it has acquired Scopely.
A failed major deal with Savy Group valued at $2 billion is reportedly what dealt a crippling blow to Embracer Group in 2023, basically kickstarting the near-implosion of the company, which ended up nearly halving its development workforce in a year.
At the moment, there is no further information about which “top team or publisher” is being targeted by Savvy, so we’ll have to wait and see.
