Brian Ward is stepping down as CEO of Savvy Games Group after five years, during which the Saudi-owned company acquired Scopely for $4.9 billion and, through Scopely, bought Niantic's geolocation business including Pokémon Go in a $3.5 billion deal in 2025. Turqi Alnowaiser, deputy governor of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, will serve as interim acting CEO until a permanent replacement is found. Ward informed staff that the time has come for new leadership, closing a tenure that shaped one of the industry's most aggressive acquisition strategies across games and esports.

Trailmix founder hands over the CEO seat

Carolin Krenzer, who established Trailmix in late 2017, has transitioned from CEO to executive chair after nearly nine years leading the studio. COO James Nicholas, who joined in 2023 and previously worked with Krenzer at King, takes over as CEO. Krenzer said she hired Nicholas "knowing he'd be a great person to succeed me one day"; the two built the succession strategy together. The leadership change comes as Trailmix's flagship mobile title Love & Pies celebrates its fifth anniversary. Separately, Rachael Grant's role as marketing lead at the studio has been made permanent.

Niantic Spatial recruits Microsoft AI's Dave Citron as CPO

Dave Citron has joined Niantic Spatial as chief product officer, arriving from a corporate VP of product role at Microsoft AI where he worked on the Superintelligence team and helped launch Microsoft's first frontier foundation models, now running in production across Microsoft 365, GitHub Copilot and Bing. Citron previously helped scale the Gemini App at Google DeepMind and grew Google Duo to 120 million daily active users and three billion installs.

"AI is remarkably good at reading and writing, but it still doesn't understand the physical world well enough to act in it safely," Citron said. "Niantic Spatial has the research, the data and the commercial traction to close that gap and become the spatial layer for physical AI."

Apple's App Store chief departs; a new CEO takes over

Phil Schiller is stepping down from his role at Apple after more than 30 years, remaining with the company as an Apple fellow working on unspecified projects. Schiller ran the App Store since 2015 and spent two decades as SVP of Worldwide Marketing; insiders told Bloomberg they believe the move is a step toward retirement. His exit coincides with a broader leadership transition: John Ternus became Apple CEO effective September 1st, after Tim Cook completed his final day in the role.

Promotions at The New York Times and Rovio's changing marketing bench

Jonathan Knight has been promoted from SVP, head of games to chief games officer at The New York Times after six years. Knight oversaw the acquisition and integration of Wordle and the launch of Crossplay, and tracked games' contribution to the publisher's revenue and subscriber growth.

Rovio VP of global marketing Luis de la Camara is leaving the company after five years, having decided in late June to relocate to the Netherlands with his wife and move into B2B ad tech. Camara led global marketing across product, performance marketing, community management and UX research, and played a part in sustaining the Angry Birds brand.

"Laura has several times moved with me abroad, to Stockholm, Dundee and Málaga, because of my gaming career. So it's my turn to return the favour," he posted on LinkedIn.

Scopely rebuilds its product bench

Chase Shi has returned to Scopely as VP, head of game product after more than six years away — five of them at Blizzard Entertainment working primarily on Diablo, following an earlier stint at Jam City leading the product roadmap for midcore title World War Doh. Shi says he is "building something ambitious" and is currently hiring across a range of product roles. Scopely also added Jonathan Marcelino as director of product for Monopoly Go, Neb Mitrikeski as lead product manager, MBA rotational product manager Luca Colonnelli, corporate strategy lead Tiana Clark (formerly Disney+ global subscriber growth and monetisation manager), and corporate development manager Rodney Lopez.

Board and executive appointments

Moloco has appointed former Etsy CFO Rachel Glaser to its board of directors. Glaser, who also serves on the boards of The New York Times Company and CoStar Group, is expected to help the AI advertising company through its next phase of growth.

Matthieu Jacquier has been appointed president of 52 Entertainment, leading its B52, Virtual Regatta and Squared divisions — the latter launched in February to focus on casual games. He replaces Olivier Comte, who has stepped away after eight years. Jacquier joins from Auditeur IHEDN with prior experience at Match Group.

Tamara Feiman has been promoted to CEO of Lion Studios after six years at the company, succeeding Nicholas Le, who becomes studio chair and PeopleFun's new CEO. Feiman previously served as EMEA business development lead, studio management director and general manager of publishing, overseeing a portfolio of more than 50 games including Coin Sort, Wordle! and Arrow Out.

Amir Satvat has joined 1Up Ventures as general partner, departing Tencent Games after three years as business development director. Supercell's Lasse Seppänen has left after more than seven years and plans to start a new studio in 2027.

Notable hires across the industry

Roblox made two significant additions: Connie Cormier as VP of talent acquisition from Waymo, and Hossein Taghavi to lead economy ML efforts. Joe Gabriel joined Unity as senior technical product manager covering Android XR integration and the Google partnership. Matt Dobill was appointed director of applied AI at Epic Games. King hired commercial finance director Max Métral from Activision Blizzard and promoted Andreas Jansson to senior director of engineering.

Samantha Benjamin moved from Supercell's Supersonic to Tripledot Studios as VP of growth after nearly nine years under the Unity and ironSource umbrella. Funday Games hired Marc Cartwright as game director to kick off a brand-new project, bringing directorial experience from Jagex, CI Games and Tarsier Studios.

Other moves include Luis Russell joining Huuuge Games as VP product after 12 years at King, CodeDev Group appointing Epic's Ben Board as CEO of The Performance Guys, Lingokids naming Mathias Royer VP, Wehype appointing Janina Warsén COO, and Christopher Kerr stepping down as Game Developer's senior news editor at the end of September.

The industry will be watching Savvy Games Group closely in the coming months as the search for a permanent CEO proceeds — a decision that will shape how the PIF-backed group manages its Scopely, Pokémon Go and esports holdings.