The Saudi sovereign fund bought Electronic Arts outright last month. Now it is weighing whether to fold the publisher into the games company it already owns. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is considering combining EA, which it took private in a deal worth about $55 billion, with Savvy Games, according to people familiar with the matter.
No decision has been made, the people said, and a move is not expected until after Savvy completes its $6 billion acquisition of the mobile game maker Moonton. Bloomberg reported the deliberations on Thursday.
The rationale is coordination. The PIF has spent years building a games portfolio through a series of large checks: it took EA private, controls the mobile publisher Scopely, and holds a stake in Nintendo. Savvy, its dedicated gaming arm, owns esports and publishing assets. Running two sizable platforms under one roof, the thinking goes, would cut internal competition and let Riyadh act as an operator rather than a passive shareholder.
The numbers involved make any combination significant. The EA take-private, at roughly $55 billion, was one of the largest deals the industry has seen, and it removed one of the last big independent publishers from public markets. Savvy’s Moonton purchase adds a mobile developer with a strong presence in Asian markets.
The PIF, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has made gaming one pillar of a broader effort to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil. The fund has set ambitious targets for assets under management and has treated entertainment and sports as industries where Saudi capital can build operating businesses, not just take minority positions.
Savvy itself is the clearest expression of that ambition. The group holds esports assets including tournament organizers, and it has poured money into a sector the kingdom sees as both a cultural export and a revenue stream. Folding EA into that structure would give the combined entity a scale few rivals could match.
Analysts said a merger of EA and Savvy would mostly be a matter of governance and portfolio management rather than product strategy. EA’s studios and franchises would keep their own pipelines; what changes is who sits above them and how budgets are divided.
The timing around Moonton is deliberate. People familiar with the matter said the fund wants the mobile acquisition closed before it tackles a larger reorganization, so that the combined entity is shaped once, not twice.
Rivals have watched the Saudi buildup warily. The fund’s entry has raised the price of studios and publishers across the industry, and a consolidated Saudi games giant would have the capital to keep bidding. Whether consolidation actually improves the games or simply concentrates them is a separate question from whether it improves the portfolio.
EA is one of the industry’s largest publishers, with franchises including the FIFA soccer series, Madden, and Battlefield, and a footprint that spans console, PC, and mobile. Its take-private removed one of the few remaining independent public publishers and gave Riyadh control of a content library that generates billions in annual revenue. Combining it with Savvy would create a games business with scale matched only by the largest Western and Chinese platforms.
Savvy already holds substantial assets. It owns Scopely, the mobile publisher behind hits such as Monopoly Go, which it acquired in a deal valued in the billions, and it is closing the $6 billion purchase of Moonton, the developer of Mobile Legends. Those assets skew toward mobile and live services, which complement EA’s console and sports portfolio.
Beyond publishing, Savvy controls esports assets and tournament infrastructure, part of the kingdom’s push to make gaming a cultural and economic export. The Crown Prince has described the sector as part of the effort to build industries that outlast oil, and gaming has the added benefit of reaching young audiences worldwide.
Analysts cautioned that the combination is more about control than synergy. Merging a Western publisher with a Gulf-backed operator raises questions about talent retention, studio culture, and how independent EA’s creative teams would remain. The people familiar with the matter said those questions are among the reasons no decision has been made.
The buildup behind this decision is a matter of public record. Savvy launched in 2022 with a $38 billion investment strategy, then bought the mobile publisher Scopely for $4.9 billion the following year. The PIF raised its stake in Nintendo to 8.26 percent, becoming the Japanese company’s largest foreign shareholder. EA was the capstone: taking the publisher private removed one of the industry’s few remaining public independents and handed the fund a content library with annual revenue in the billions.
The gaming push sits inside a broader Saudi effort to turn capital into operating businesses. The same logic financed a tour in golf and the purchase of an English football club, but gaming is treated as the most durable piece because it reaches young audiences worldwide and runs on digital infrastructure the kingdom is also building. Riyadh has backed esports events with state money, and Savvy’s esports assets extend that reach.
The people cautioned that the plan could still be dropped. Merging EA into Savvy would involve employment structures, licensing, and tax questions across jurisdictions. But the direction Riyadh has chosen is hard to miss: it bought the publisher, it is building the operator, and the next step is deciding whether they should be the same company.
