Saudi Arabia’s appetite for gaming consolidation is reportedly unsated. Its leveraged buyout to take over Battlefield 6 publisher Electronic Arts isn’t even complete yet and it’s already eyeing other major deals, according to Reuters. This time the target is TikTok owner ByteDance’s gaming subsidiary Moonton which could sell for as much as $7 billion.
Reuters reports that the “broad terms” of the transaction are already agreed upon, with the official deal possibly getting announced as early as March (thanks GameSpot). ByteDance purchased Moonton back in 2021 for $4 billion and Saudi Arabia, through its game investment vehicle Savvy Games Group, is apparently willing to pay over 50 percent more than that just a few years later.
So what the hell does Moonton make to justify that spiking valuation at a time when so many other parts of the game industry are financially plateauing? The Shanghai-based subsidiary’s biggest game is the 2016 MOBA Mobile Legends: Bang Bang which has been downloaded over a billion times. Last year it also launched the auto battler Magic Chess: Go Go, the RPG Silver and Blood, and the coop vertical shooter Acecraft.
That last game is a thinly-veiled remix of Cuphead and features cartoon icons like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Tom, and Jerry as fighter pilots. Some players feel like it’s essentially a microtransaction casino dressed up in the retro animation stylings of Studio MDHR’s hit 2017 indie action platformer. Weirdly, the game randomly went offline for all U.S. players starting last month. Moonton promised make-up rewards once it returns but it’s still mysteriously MIA.
Saudi Arabia corners the mobile gaming market
A $6-$7 billion sale price would make Moonton one of the top-10 biggest gaming acquisitions in history, but it’s hardly the only mobile titan Saudi Arabia has sought to gobble up in recent years. Savvy Games Group also purchased Monopoly Go maker Scopely in 2023 for $4.9 billion and Pokémon Go maker Niantic in 2025 for $3.5 billion.
The EA acquisition still dwarfs those, but won’t be complete until sometime over the summer. While the Madden and Sims publisher’s board of directors and shareholders overwhelmingly approved a historic $55 billion deal to take EA private, unions and Democrats in Congress have called for investigations and regulatory due diligence before one of the largest American gaming companies is sold to a foreign government.
Given Saudi Arabia’s direct line to the White House via President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who reportedly helped broker the deal and has a personal stake in it via his own Saudi-backed investment group, that seems unlikely to happen.
