SAN FRANCISCO – Savvy Games, the Saudi government-funded gaming conglomerate headquartered in Riyadh, does not plan to use its newfound shares in some of the world’s biggest game companies to push for major changes in those publishers, Savvy chief Brian Ward said in a talk at GDC.
Earlier this year, Savvy assumed control of some $12 billion worth of stock in Nintendo, Take Two, Square Enix, and others major firms, per Bloomberg and Reuters reports of public filings.
Over the last few years, those stock purchases had initially been made directly by the Saudi kingdom’s Public Investment Fund, which recently transferred them to Savvy.
The stakes range from 5-10% of the companies, making Savvy one of the biggest shareholders of each.
“It gives us probably a little bit better opportunity to collaborate with those companies,” Ward said, but denied that Savvy was going to pressure the gaming giants to change their strategies.
“We’re not in any hurry to to make any changes. We haven’t proposed anything. We don’t have anything on the books.”
Ward instead described the shares as an investment that gives Savvy added liquidity to help finance potential future mergers and acquisitions. Though he said Savvy didn’t “have a big target in mind at the moment.” (Savvy is already rumored to be interested in ByteDance’s Moonton mobile game studio, but Ward wouldn’t comment on that at GDC).
Savvy has previously invested in Swedish gaming conglomerate The Embracer Group, where Ward now is a member of its board of directors.
Since 2022, Savvy has had a mandate from the kingdom to invest $38 billion in gaming. It has spend much of it has on the purchase of esports organizations and the mobile gaming companies Scopely (Monopoly Go) and Niantic (Pokémon Go). I interviewed Ward in 2022 about the Savvy project and the controversies around its Saudi backing.
Ward said he did not know if Savvy would be involved in Electronic Arts, should the company’s $55 billion plan to go private, largely funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, clears regulatory hurdles.
Ward’s talk was featured in GDC’s new Luminaries sessions, held at a theater across the street from the big halls packed with thousands of GDC showgoers. In front of a small gathering of a few dozen people, Ward was interviewed on stage by Bloomberg’s tech executive editor Tom Giles. Giles began the session by acknowledging that many people on Ward’s team are in a region that is now the location of an “increasingly global conflict.” He said he hoped the Savvy team was faring okay.
“I was in Riyadh last week, where we’re based, for several days after the initial bombings in Iran, and Riyadh was fine,” Ward said.
He added: “Hopefully it de-escalates in the areas that have been more adversely affected.”
In a separate interview with a Bloomberg reporter that was published yesterday, Ward said: “It’s obviously not helpful for the region to have this escalation and it will change probably or cool the perception of it as being a stable and quiet place where people want to go.”
Saudi Arabia’s multi-billon dollar push into gaming has included extravagant live events in Riyadh, including the now-annual Esports World Cup, which is slated to kick off on July 6.
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The company says it has cooperated with New York’s investigation since 2023 and says that some of the state’s suggested remedies—including making digital good non-transferable and gathering more personal information from customers—are unacceptable.
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