The Saudi Arabian government is betting $38 billion on the country's potential to become the next hub for the video-game industry.

As part of its strategy to diversify its economy away from oil, Saudi Arabia, through its Public Investment Fund, wants to become a big player in the $184 billion global gaming market. After focusing initially on the esports industry, which has been struggling, the fund's subsidiary, Savvy Gaming Group, is now looking to develop, publish and acquire top-tier games and support a gaming industry in Riyadh.

A faster path to Savvy's "ultimate objective" to help the country become a global entertainment hub by 2030 is to acquire studios or publishers, including internationally, Ward said. Electronic Arts would be "too big" for them — Savvy has about $13 billion to invest in acquiring a game publisher — although Ward would consider taking another public game publisher private.

Kantan Games' Toto points out that China's controversial government hasn't hurt gaming giant Tencent's international expansion strategy. The Saudi Fund has already invested in beloved gaming companies like Nintendo, he says. "Will people really buy less Switch games?"

Saudi Arabia Is Investing $38 Billion to Become a Video-Game Hub - Bloomberg

"Will people really buy less Switch games? I guess he didn't pay attention to the Wii U and Gamecube era.

They've particularly been favoring Japanese companies. With $13 billion available, I wonder if a publisher like Sega may be on their wishlist.

Imagine the wonders they could do if they invested 10% of that into making better and more specialized colleges or programs for people to learn programming and game development, so that videogames could actually come from the people of Saudi Arabia, instead of the money.

Honestly tho, I wondered the same thing for Microsoft. Why don't they just expand and improve on themselves rather than targeting others. But I guess that's what happens when you have immense wealth, just so much easier and faster.

Is this an additional 38 billion now or just a report of what we already know.

lol glad the rumors of them buying wwe were false. Thanks Endeavor

Hope they get SE or Capcom

I should just become a retro gamer only. Watching the industry die and become a pile of shit hurts so much.

Very naive thinking. How is that supposed to work? Clone developers? There's a limited amount of workforce and all companies in that industry are competing for them. You can't hire what doesn't exist. Besides, you just compared a company to a government.

There's no difference between opening new studios and then poach experienced developers from other studios to fill up the vacant positions or just straight up buying entire studios. You can't just fill up all the spots with newbies.

It's called investing in education, both basic and specialized, and investing in the industry in a way that makes it approachable for the people of Saudi Arabia to play games, therefore creating interest from within and creating a path for these people to actually work in the industry. Of course, this is a long-term approach with the intent of making the lives of the people in the country better and allowing them to chase dreams they currently can't. None of this is what the Saudi government are looking for, obviously - their reasoning for doing any of this is what it's always been, money-washing. Best to get it done quick.