A year ago, Brian Ward, CEO of Savvy Games Group, schooled us all on what it meant to be ambitious in the game industry. Fueled by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and its wager on games, Savvy acquired Scopely, the mobile game publisher, for $4.9 billion.
Some thought that was too high a price. Then Scopely’s Monopoly Go mobile game took off, generating $2 billion in revenues in its first 10 months. A full year after the acquisition, I did an interview with Ward about the consequences of taking risks and being ambitious. Our talk came after I interviewed the co-CEO of Scopely — Walter Driver and Javier Ferreira — at our GamesBeat Summit 2024 event in May.
Ward said his company, which is also a holding company for the ESL Face-It Group esports property, has a duty to help Scopely operate freely and independently. I talked with Ward about a variety of subjects; he said the kingdom is going through enormous cultural change with gaming leading the way. But we also talked about the issue of LGBTQ+ people and their rights in the kingdom, where perhaps many people feel change isn’t happening fast enough. As the Esports World Cup is taking place this summer in Riyadh, the spotlight around reputational issues will fall upon the kingdom again.
Today is the anniversary of the Savvy’s acquisition of Scopely, which toiled on its hit game Monopoly Go for seven years. Now it has a considerable war chest to grow — on top of the war chest that Savvy has to acquire more companies in gaming. We’ll see over time if this means that Savvy and its bullet train will be unstoppable.
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Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
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