Modern Times Group (MTG) wants to double in size over the next three to five years, and president and CEO Maria Redin says that growth will require acquisitions on top of organic expansion.

"I am a big believer that you need scale and you get benefit from scale," Redin tells PocketGamer.biz. "But it's not getting big for the sake of getting big. It's always about being relevant, and relevant being having amazing games that our players love. So the only way we can double, I wish I could say we can do that through purely organic growth, but I think that's too ambitious, but that means that we will continue to have that selective M&A agenda, selectively diversifying our portfolio with more amazing evergreen IPs, or on the casual side, evergreen franchises. And then you fuel that with organic growth."

She frames the target against MTG's recent track record: "during my CEOship, we more than tripled the company. So I think that doubling again, yes, it's ambitious, but I think having a high ambition also takes us further."

The Swedish group's games portfolio spans InnoGames, Snowprint Studios, Hutch, Ninja Kiwi, Futureplay, PlaySimple and Plarium. MTG acquired Raid: Shadow Legends developer Plarium from Aristocrat Leisure for $620 million, after Aristocrat exited games to focus on its casino business. PlaySimple, meanwhile, has filed for a $350 million IPO in Mumbai.

A "village" built on selective M&A

Redin describes a "village philosophy" underpinning how MTG evaluates targets. Studios must stand on their own merits with a solid financial outlook before MTG can "turbocharge" their growth. "So we said no to a lot of things," she says. "When I say I want more scale, it's all relevant scale. It's finding that incremental one company that we truly believe should come into our gaming village."

That philosophy relies on sharing technology and learnings across the group, because MTG studios compete not only with other game companies but with social media and streaming platforms for player attention. "When one studio learns something good, we should make sure that's being shared. If we have an amazing marketing platform, we don't need to replicate that and build something else in a different studio. We make sure that that marketing platform can actually be leveraged across the group."

Geographically, MTG remains Western-focused in both game style and studio location, but Redin confirms the company is spending more time examining studios in Türkiye, China and Vietnam. Genre diversification remains the first filter for any deal.

Once inside the group, studios operate within a framework tied to MTG's goals. "I'm a big believer that each CO needs to be accountable for their own results, earn the P&L and also earn the creative development because otherwise it's hard for them to deliver something that they haven't committed to," Redin says.

PlayAmp and the AI framework

Last month, MTG rebranded its midcore, IAP-focused division — home to Plarium, InnoGames, Snowprint, Hutch, Ninja Kiwi and Futureplay — as PlayAmp. Shared services across the division include Plarium's data platform, the GoGame marketing platform, a direct-to-consumer platform that now accounts for 51% of the division's total revenue as of Q2 2026, and a centralised AI Lab.

Redin says the rebrand gives the division a shared identity and prevents teams from getting stuck — "we can run faster."

On AI, MTG avoids running purely central initiatives because, given the industry's pace, "then you will miss so many things." Instead, the company maintains a framework of whitelisted tools defining dos and don'ts, within which studios can experiment quickly. "We can make sure that each studio has a wide array of tools that they can test. Then we find which are the best," she says, with working tools and systems shared across studios and divisions. The AI Lab iterates in a sandbox environment incrementally to studio-level work.

Redin argues AI changes the economics of new game development. "What used to be maybe one games team making one game like a year ago, you can actually make three games now because you size them differently, you actually leverage tools in a different way, so you can fundamentally rewrite the whole work process in new games development."

That yields more shots on goal. "We can test more ideas. We can kill more ideas, and, in a perfect world, also come faster to launch," she says, while noting that established production chains won't be rewritten from scratch — every process gets adapted and tweaked instead.

Redin insists the strategy does not target workforce reductions. "Right now it complements the teams that we have," she says, positioning AI as a way to raise quality, output and the number of games reaching market, including marketing creative production.

Whether MTG can convert that tooling into the next $600 million-scale acquisition — or reach the doubling target through smaller village additions — will be the signal to watch as PlaySimple's Mumbai listing progresses.