Savvy's $38bn War Chest and a $6bn Moonton Bid Lead MENA's 2026 Power List

Newzoo forecasts the Middle East and Africa will again be the world's fastest-growing games region in 2026, up 10.3% year-on-year to $8.5 billion, with sovereign funds from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Morocco backing the push. Egypt, a significant market, still lacks a public gaming strategy to match its neighbours. The Top 30 MENA Game Makers of 2026 list, published alongside Pocket Gamer Connects Jordan (November 7-8) and the Dubai GameExpo Summit, captures who's converting that capital into products.

What's changing at the top of the market?

Savvy Games Group, backed by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, has revealed plans for a $6 billion deal for Mobile Legends: Bang Bang maker Moonton. In January 2026, PIF moved to transfer roughly $12bn in gaming shares to Savvy — including Nintendo and Bandai Namco stakes — then added its ~$3bn Take-Two stake a month later. Scopely, which Savvy owns, bought Niantic's games business for $3.5bn and took a majority stake in Turkey's Loom Games at a valuation above $1bn; Monopoly Go! passed $6bn in lifetime player spending in 2025. Savvy has deployed around $13bn of its $38bn commitment as of March 2026, and PIF is weighing a merger with EA.

Yalla Group reaches almost 48m monthly users; games services revenue hit $34.2m in Q2 2026, 41.4% of total sales of $82.6m, though paying users fell to 10.9m. A Riyadh regional HQ opens in 2026, plus two Saudi Esports Federation deals covering the Saudi eLeague 2026 and the Saudi Esports Academy.

Which studios are scaling fastest?

• Breeze Games (Dubai, founded 2024): Triple Match City has passed 10m downloads and $136m lifetime player spend (AppMagic); the US accounts for ~72% of revenue. It's the number-two top-grossing hidden-object game behind Wooga's June's Journey.
• Jet Games (UAE): three titles, 100m-plus downloads and over $36m player spending, with Drive Zone Online at 90m installs and just under $35m.
• Tamatem (Jordan): ~200 staff across six cities, first internally developed game King of Delivery 2, an acquisition of Istanbul's Playable Factory, and $10m new funding — $25m total — from investors including Krafton and Square Enix.
• iBLOXX Studios (Dubai): ~25 staff, seven figures invested internally, plus a $5.4m round for StrayShot, an Unreal Engine 5 shooter for mobile and PC, targeting 2026 release and consoles in 2027.
• Kammelna Gaming Group: Impact46 acquired it from Remal Ventures for $53m in 2025; the Baloot platform has 6m-plus downloads, over 1m monthly actives and a 40-person team.

What's happening with mobile catalogues?

High-volume mobile remains the region's engine. Game Park (UAE) has 48 apps nearing 600m downloads, with Bus Simulator: 3D Bus Games past 100m. FunVent Games cleared 400m downloads, up from 300m-plus a year ago, reaching 27m-plus MAU and 5m-plus DAU at 40 minutes daily play. StarPlay's portfolio passed 333m downloads and $4m revenue, led by Spider Fighter 3 at an estimated 208m. HitBox Games has shipped 90-plus apps with 127m installs, per estimates.

Card and social gaming keeps monetising hardest. Jawaker, Stillfront-owned and Abu Dhabi-based, runs 50-plus games in seven languages; AppMagic estimates $138m lifetime player spending, with the flagship app generating a record $17.1m in the first eight months of 2026. YallaPlay built CorePlay, a unified engine handling matchmaking, analytics, monetisation, live ops and UA, running Spades Masters ($3.4m lifetime spend) and Tarneeb Masters ($2m).

Who's going premium and multi-platform?

Saudi indies are moving beyond mobile. Ash Games Studio raised $1.5m in July 2026 from Merak Capital and Impact46 after Azooma Escape became, per the studio, the first Arabic indie game on Steam's global front page; next is Nomad: The Legend of Zarqa for PC, PlayStation and Xbox in 2027. Starvania shipped Bahamut and the Waqwaq Tree on PS5 and Xbox in May 2026 with physical editions rolling out in Asia, Japan and the US; the team grew from four to 13. Amman's Mad Hook Games put Highway Drifter: Hajwala Simulator on Steam in January after PS5 and PS4 releases, with 100m-plus downloads across its catalogue.

Morocco's Ouaz Games, a 10-person bootstrapped studio, pivoted from hypercasual after Apple's ATT (App Tracking Transparency) changes to browser platforms — CrazyGames, YouTube Playables, TikTok Mini Games — targeting 50 live games by end-2026.

The list also flags a quieter shift: Naphora has moved from investment label to developer-publisher with three 2026 soft launches and AI built into development infrastructure. Saudi publisher Level Up Gaming, led by ex-Microsoft executive Mohammed Habbab, is signing PC indies including Fleetbreakers from Halo Wars and Age of Empires veterans. Egypt's absence from the strategy conversation, meanwhile, remains the region's most conspicuous gap.

Watch the Moonton close and the mooted EA merger — either would redraw the global maps of publisher ownership.