Drawing on Aream & Co.’s financial advisory experience and InvestGame’s data intelligence, the Video Game Market Update Q3 2026 breaks down where deals closed, capital concentrated, and platform growth persisted in the global gaming market.

Here’s what defined Q3 2026:

• M&A deal count stayed close to its post-pandemic peak: 54 transactions worth $57.8B, including EA’s $55B take-private, which closed in August. Content dealmaking gained speed, with 18 control acquisitions of developers and publishers above $100M in 2026 YTD, nearly equal to 2023–25 combined. Asia was the center of activity, led by Trustar Capital’s agreed acquisition of Lingxi Games.
  

• Public offerings rose sharply YoY: 13 deals raised $1.3B, up 122% YoY, building on a strong Q2 headlined by Liftoff’s $503M Nasdaq IPO. The listing pipeline is filling up: Catalyst has priced its $212M gaming SPAC, and PlaySimple is getting ready to list. PC and console stocks had a strong Q3, helped by successful launches.
  

• Private investment more than tripled YoY: $2.8B deployed across 137 deals, with late-stage rounds climbing to $2.0B, a level not seen since Q4 2021. AI tech companies VAST, Meshy, and General Intuition together raised $1.2B. In mobile, UA financing has moved into the mainstream as an alternative to equity, totaling 27 deals worth $374M over the last twelve months.
  

• PC kept growing while consoles declined: Steam generated $5.4B in Q3, with LTM revenue up 14% and new IP leading the way as Wardogs became the top Q3 release. Console revenue dropped 12% YoY to $14.1B in the most recent reported quarter, the sharpest quarterly decline in two years, as all three platforms posted lower revenue.
  

• Mobile spend slipped: IAP spend fell 7% YoY to $19.6B in Q3 as the install base shrank, with downloads down 10% over the last twelve months, while Turkish and Asian publishers continued to take share.

For a comprehensive breakdown of deal flow, platform performance, and capital-market trends, access the Aream & Co. Video Game Market Update Q3 2026 below.

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Photon maker Exit Games buys back Skillz’s 2021 stake for $55m

Germany-based game tech company Exit Games, the developer of the Photon multiplayer engine, has bought back the ~10.5% stake held by Firy (NYSE: FIRY), formerly Skillz, for $55m in cash. The sale closed on Oct 2, 2026. Skillz invested $50m in Jul’21 to use Photon in its mobile tournaments. With the sale, the two companies also ended the Photon licenses Skillz signed that year, and Firy is using the proceeds to redeem the rest of its 10.25% secured notes on Oct 15.

Photon sells networking software that keeps every player in an online match in sync, plus a hosted cloud that carries the traffic, and charges developers by peak concurrent users. It counts more than 1.4 billion monthly players and 1 million developers, with PC and mobile games including the party royale Stumble Guys, which Photon says it prototyped on its own engine before building it with Kitka Games, the PC ghost-hunting horror game Phasmophobia, and the co-op climbing game PEAK.

The business is profitable. In 2023, the latest year with consolidated group accounts, it made net profit of $39.6m (EUR 36.6m) on revenue of $67.5m (EUR 62.5m), down from $97.7m (EUR 92.8m) in 2022. At the price per share Firy received, the whole company would be worth ~13x its 2023 profit. In 2024, the latest year filed, the parent company alone reported net profit of $24.1m (EUR 22.3m) on revenue of $34.1m (EUR 31.5m). Exit Games was founded in 2003, and co-founder Christof Wegmann remains a managing director. Before Skillz, its outside backers included Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Neuhaus Partners and smac partners, which invested $4.6m (EUR 3.5m) in 2007.

Gardens raises $35m+ Series B led by Lightspeed for a social role-playing game from the makers of Journey and Sky

US-based social role-playing game developer Gardens Interactive has raised more than $35m in a Series B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with further closes expected before the end of October. This funding round brought Gardens’ total funds raised to $70.8m, according to InvestGame tracking. Bloomberg reported a $190m pre-money valuation. Lightspeed, which co-led the Series A with Krafton (KOSPI: 259960), expanded its stake. The round is the second-largest of 2026 for a PC & Console games studio tracked by InvestGame, behind only the $100m raised by studio holding company GreaterThan Group.

The round includes Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Accel and Eric Schmidt‘s Innovation Endeavors, alongside Zenith Capital, the firm of Fallout TV series executive producer James Altman, and founders including Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield and FunPlus founder Andy Zhong. Stanford University, Sora co-creator Thomas Dimson, and investor Moritz Baier-Lentz also joined the round. Yamauchi No.10, the family office of Nintendo’s founding family (TSE: 7974), invested again. Gardens’ release describes it as the office’s first and only games startup investment in the family’s gaming legacy of over 100 years. V Pappas, a Lightspeed operating partner and former TikTok COO, joins the board, and Krafton’s Mike Hong replaces Maria Park as Krafton’s board representative.

Gardens was founded in May 2021 by brothers Stephen Bell, its CEO, and Chris Bell, its creative director, with Lexie Dostal, and operates as a distributed studio. The team’s credits include the adventure games Journey and What Remains of Edith Finch and the social adventure Sky: Children of the Light. Its debut, a social role-playing game the studio calls a “strandbox”, is in closed pre-alpha, with no title or platforms announced yet, and the funds go to its launch and live operations.

Xsolla World Map is a free, interactive research tool built for game developers planning to go global. It covers 200+ territories with 30+ data points each: from gamer demographics and top genres to local payment methods, tax requirements, content laws, and cultural localization tips. Instead of piecing together market research from multiple sources, developers get everything in one place to make smarter decisions about where and how to launch their game.

Notable Transactions

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Fireshine Games, the UK-based publishing arm of Sweden-based Enad Global 7 (STO: EG7), has acquired Denmark-based indie games developer Fair Games, the studio behind the survival-crafting game Necesse, for $4.0m upfront. The sellers can receive up to $2.0m more tied to content and platform releases, plus an earn-out of 10-20% of net revenue after service costs with no stated cap. Necesse has sold ~2.5 million copies and generated ~$14.4m in gross revenue since its Early Access launch on Steam in Dec’19. In 2025, the year of its full release, Fair Games made gross profit of $3.4m (DKK 22.5m) and net profit of $2.0m (DKK 13.1m), so the upfront price is 1.2x gross profit and 2.0x net profit, rising to 1.8x and 3.0x including the $2.0m tied to releases. The eight-person studio stays in Aarhus under founder Mads Skovgaard and joins a Fireshine survival-crafting line-up that includes Core Keeper and Len’s Island.

Japan-based Sony Group (TSE: 6758) has sold 43 US extended-reality patents to Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) for an undisclosed sum, under an agreement covering 419 patents and applications: 180 in the US, 96 in Japan, 81 in China, 27 in Germany and 35 in the UK, France, South Korea, the Netherlands, India and Italy. The agreement took effect on Dec 17, 2025, and the US transfers were recorded in five filings from Jun 30 to Sep 18, 2026. The patents cover XR information processing, head-mounted displays, and XR glasses, filed from 2010 to 2022. PS VR2 has been unavailable at PlayStation Direct in the US since mid-September, and Meta’s Reality Labs lost $4.6B on $431m of revenue in Q2’26. Meta itself, as Facebook, paid $2.0B for Oculus in Mar’14. More recently, Google, part of Alphabet, paid $250m in Jan’25 for part of HTC’s Vive XR team and a license to its XR IP. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund invested $400m in AR headset maker Magic Leap in Mar’18 and an additional $750m in 2023-24, according to Magic Leap’s UK filings.

Japan-based games publisher Nexon (TSE: 3659) has named Chernin Entertainment, the film and TV drama production arm of Peter Chernin’s The North Road Company, lead producer of film and television adaptations of the extraction shooter ARC Raiders and the F2P arena shooter The Finals, both from its Sweden-based studio Embark Studios, under a partnership agreement on undisclosed terms. Chernin was chosen from a field of competing production companies and studios. ARC Raiders has sold more than 16 million copies since its Oct’25 launch, and The Finals has registered more than 30 million players in three years, according to Nexon.

VENTURE FINANCING

US-based Thrixel, an AI-native 3D creation platform, has raised $3m in inception funding from Sierra Ventures, MFV Partners, Harper Court Ventures and Z5 Capital, with participation from AI researcher Jon Barron and games investor Matt Bilbey, formerly of Electronic Arts. Founded by University of Chicago computer scientist Rana Hanocka, Thrixel generates 3D assets as named, hierarchical parts that AI coding agents can assemble and animate inside standard game engines.

US-based micro studio Job Studios has raised $500k from CGT Capital Group, a Wyoming-based single-family office led by managing partner Christopher Parker, which takes a stake and plans further marketing funding. The studio is developing Close Quarter Combat, a cooperative PvE shooter for PC and Xbox built in Unreal Engine 5, in which squads of five, with AI teammates filling empty slots, take on AI enemies. Its target price is $19.99.

US-based Reactor, the developer platform for real-time generative video and world models, has added NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Sapphire Ventures to its Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, for an undisclosed sum. Reactor was founded in 2025 by Alberto Taiuti and Bryce Schmidtchen, former technical leads on the Vision Pro at Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Taiuti co-founded Luma AI. Reactor emerged in May’26 with $59m across its Seed and Series A, and runs generative video and world models at more than 60 frames per second for media companies, world-model labs and robotics teams.

Türkiye-based mobile games developer Mobge Games has raised an undisclosed sum from Joygrid Ventures at a $10m valuation. The İzmir studio made the Viking platformer Oddmar, which won a 2018 Apple Design Award and was later released on Nintendo Switch, and is now focusing on mobile action games with global growth potential.

Public Market Performance

It was a flat week for the tracked universe: of 64 eligible companies, 32 rose, 31 fell, and 1 was flat, with a median move of +0.03%, over the Friday Oct 2 to Friday Oct 9 window.

Share Price Signals

Enad Global 7 (+12.32%) rose after its publishing arm, Fireshine Games, acquired Fair Games, the studio behind the survival-crafting game Necesse, on Oct 7 for $4m upfront from available cash. The game has generated $14.4m in gross revenue since 2019, and EG7 expects it to contribute positively to group results.

Mattel (+9.30%) extended last week’s rally as pressure to sell mounted. Ariel Investments, which owns 5.4%, urged the board to consider a sale, as reported on Oct 5, and toy maker Zuru was reported on Oct 7 to be exploring a rival bid. Both add to Authentic Brands Group’s reported approach at more than $20 a share.

Unity Software (+7.50%) rose after Google and Unity announced a partnership on an AI gaming platform on Oct 7, connecting Unity’s upcoming AI game-creation tool Spark, due later this year, with Google’s Playground and Play Games services. Raymond James upgraded the stock to Outperform from Market Perform on Oct 8, with a $54 target, citing a stronger-than-expected Grow advertising business led by Vector, and the Google partnership as a response to concerns about Unity’s creator funnel.

PLAYSTUDIOS (-16.97%) fell in its first full week after a 1-for-10 reverse stock split took effect on Oct 1. On Oct 6, it disclosed it would shut down the puzzle game Tetris Block Party in October and book a $3.0-3.5m non-cash impairment, following the earlier closure of its Win Zone product.

Modern Times Group (-15.05%) fell after it postponed the planned IPO of its India-based casual games developer PlaySimple on Oct 9, citing conditions in the Indian capital markets, and said it will revisit the timing in 2027. Handelsbanken had named the listing a potential catalyst for the stock two days earlier.

Paradox Interactive (-9.45%) fell after ABG Sundal Collier cut its rating from Buy to Hold on Oct 5 and lowered its target to SEK 155 from SEK 160. ABG said sales of the transport tycoon game Transport Fever 3 were disappointing relative to its budget and would weigh on profitability through 2028, and that the shares trade at ~16x expected 2027 EBIT versus ~10x for peers. Handelsbanken kept its Buy rating but cut its target to SEK 160 from SEK 168 on Oct 7.

NCSOFT (-7.88% through Thursday Oct 8, the last session of the week in Seoul) fell as the Western and Japanese launch of the MMORPG Aion 2 on Oct 5, following its Korea and Taiwan release in Nov’25, drew a strong but not exceptional audience. NH Investment & Securities put the launch-day peak at 398,000 concurrent players, easing to ~200,000 by Oct 7, and on Oct 8 cut its target to KRW 320,000 from KRW 380,000 while keeping Buy, citing lighter expected monetization than the MMORPG Throne and Liberty.

It was a mixed week for gaming stocks: 29 of the 59 companies we track rose, and the median move was 0.0%. AdTech stood out, down 6.8%, the most of the four indices that fell. AppLovin fell on every one of the five sessions, from $310.75 on Sep 25 to $268.22, in the same week a San Francisco court turned down its request for a temporary restraining order against Unity’s Ad Quality SDK. The fight itself isn’t over: it continues in private arbitration. Year to date, only Large Cap PC & Console is still in the green, at +3.5%.

The catalysts behind the week’s largest moves are below.

What moved them

• NEXON (-13.8%) A special dividend of $2.64 (JPY 415) per share went ex on Sep 29, and that day the shares dropped $2.82 (JPY 442.5) to $16.71 (JPY 2,625.5). Add the dividend back and the weekly fall is about 0.5%.

• AppLovin (-13.7%) The court declined its request to restrain Unity’s Ad Quality SDK, and the shares fell more than 5% premarket. Wedbush also flagged stronger Unity bids in MAX auctions.

• NCSOFT (+13.7%) Its MMORPG Aion 2 opened global early access on Steam on Sep 30, topped the global sales chart, came first in 12 countries and peaked at 171,530 concurrent players.

• Digital Bros (-12.3%) Its FY2025/26 results on Sep 24 booked $21.3m (EUR 18.7m) of write-offs on three cancelled games and guided to lower revenue this year. The shares then fell on all five sessions.

• Remedy Entertainment (-9.5%) Inderes cut its rating from Buy to Accumulate, while raising its price target to $26.17 (EUR 23.00) from $23.89 (EUR 21.00). It noted Control Resonant’s Steam peak of about 41,000 players.

Also in the top five, without a catalyst in the deck: Kakao Games (+12.4%), G5 Entertainment (+9.2%), NACON (+8.2%) and Modern Times Group (+5.5%) among gainers, and PulluP Entertainment (-9.3%) among decliners.

Also this week

• EU regulators move on in-game currencies. On Sep 30, EU consumer regulators opened coordinated actions against nine games companies over in-game currencies. King, Supercell, Mojang and Riot Games are among them.

• The week’s largest deal. General Intuition raised $220m at a $6.2B valuation, 2.7 times what it was valued at in June. The price rests on Medal’s library of gameplay clips.

• Xbox is not for sale. That’s what Xbox CEO Asha Sharma told The New York Times, adding that the company will look at the right partnerships and operating model.

• Steam rethinks discounts. Valve paused curated placements in Steam’s Discounts and Events section and is using personalized recommendations instead. In tests, they showed customers 10 times more games a day.

Keep reading

• AppLovin v Unity, step by step: what AppLovin alleges, what it asked the court for, what the court decided and how both stocks moved.

• PC/Console Pulse, with Alinea Analytics: revenue, copies and Twitch hours for six titles, which ones made more money than buzz, and a closer look at Gears of War: E-Day and Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve.

• Indices, week and year to date: where all six InvestGame gaming indices stand.

• Deals of the week: all 14 transactions, from General Intuition’s $220m round to Bose buying FMOD developer Firelight.

• The full 16-page deck: including deep dives on General Intuition and the EU’s actions over in-game currencies.

Two lines run in opposite directions. Buyers pay less for each dollar of revenue than they did in 2020–2021, and yet 2026 already has more deals in this report than any year since 2022.

Prices came down

Through the COVID years, 2020 to 2021, buyers paid a median 2.9x revenue (n=23) and 10.0x EBITDA (n=17) across the 48 deals of the period. From 2022 to 2026, that dropped to 2.3x and 9.1x: 21% lower on revenue and 9% lower on EBITDA.

The last 18 months pulled it down further. Deals announced between March 2025 and September 2026 cleared at 2.0x revenue and 8.6x EBITDA, 31% and 14% below the COVID years.

Median EV/Revenue and EV/EBITDA by year, and deals included per year. Hatched years rest on fewer than 5 priced deals on at least one multiple, so their medians are indicative. Source: InvestGame Mobile Gaming M&A Valuation Report, September 2026.

Deals came back

Deal activity has more than halved from the COVID-era peak, from around 24 deals a year in 2020–2021 to 11 a year since 2022. 2023, 2024 and 2025 had 5, 8 and 6 deals.

However, with 14 deals by 5 September, 2026 is already shaping up to be the busiest year since 2022.

The last 18 months brought 20 deals and $14.7bn of disclosed deal value. Of that, $6.0bn (41%) is a single deal: Savvy Games Group’s acquisition of Moonton in March 2026, with no disclosed multiple.

Not every studio is priced the same

The median hides a wide spread. Since 2020, $1bn+ deals traded at 3.9x revenue and 19.7x EBITDA, against 2.1x and 9.1x for deals between $100m and $1bn: a roughly 1.9x premium on revenue and 2.2x on EBITDA.

Large-cap deals also command much higher value per employee: a median $3.3m for $1bn+ deals against $1.3m below $1bn, and $1.8m overall. Hit-title studios with small teams run far above that. Playdemic is a clear outlier at $21.5m per employee.

How each size band moved after the COVID years, how much sellers actually get at closing, and what buyers pay to take a listed studio private are below.

Become a premium subscriber to read the full report

Here is what’s inside:

1. Every recent deal, priced. The revenue and EBITDA multiple, upfront EV and buyer for 11 of the 13 priced deals of the last 18 months.

2. Large cap: the $1bn+ deals. 15 deals and $45.4bn of value, and how the revenue multiple moved after the COVID years while EBITDA held.

3. Mid cap, before and after 2022. 41 deals between $100m and $1bn, split into the COVID years and 2022 onwards, with the priced deals charted.

4. EV per employee. 38 deals with headcount, and the one size band where value per employee went up since 2022.

5. Earn-outs. How much of the price sellers get at closing, how long the rest is tested, and the deals where most of the value is deferred.

6. Take-privates. The premium paid over the share price for each listed target, and why the listed-target multiple is mostly a size effect.

7. The full PDF. All 11 slides, with the methodology and the list of notable deals whose financials are undisclosed.

Read Premium Digest #39

General Intuition raises $220m at $6.2B as game clips become training data for world-model AI

US-based frontier AI lab General Intuition has raised $220m at a $6.2B valuation, backed by Valor Equity Partners, Atreides, Seven Seven Six, Point72, Khosla Ventures, and General Catalyst. The valuation nearly tripled from $2.3B at its June announcement (Series A, $320m round). With the $133.7m Seed of Oct’25, General Intuition has raised $673.7m in under a year. Khosla Ventures and General Catalyst have backed all three rounds, while Valor, Atreides, Point72, and Seven Seven Six joined in this one.

The asset behind the price is gameplay data. General Intuition and game-clip platform Medal sit under a common Dutch holding company and share a founder, General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte. The lab trains its models on Medal’s clips under an arrangement between the two companies. Each Medal clip pairs what a player saw with the actions they took, and those action labels let a model learn how to act, not only what a scene looks like. The company’s case is that people play games and operate robots through the same inputs and outputs. Its latest round, announced on Sep 29, funds robotic embodiments, compute, and hiring in New York and Europe. Medal’s uploads have accelerated through 2026, and de Witte says leading robotics and world models train on less than 1% of the action data General Intuition can draw on.

Medal raised $13m at a $333m post-money valuation in Jul’24, and OpenAI reportedly offered ~$500m for Medal in late 2024. The clip library behind that bid now underpins a $6.2B valuation for a lab that trains its models on it.

General Intuition ranks fifth among world-model developers by capital raised in 2026, but its $6.2B post-money valuation is the highest round valuation in the group. The only higher price in the segment is not a round: AMD’s ~$8.2B all-stock acquisition of World Labs, whose Series C in Feb’26 was reportedly priced at ~$5.4B. Capital is concentrating in a few labs that raise repeatedly within months: VAST and HiDream.ai each closed four rounds this year, and Shengshu and GigaAI three each. China-based developers hold four of the ten places, backed by Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and state-linked funds. Valuations here do not track capital raised: AMI Labs raised nearly twice as much as General Intuition this year, at a $3.5B pre-money valuation versus General Intuition’s $6.0B pre-money.

Data from interactive entertainment, from player inputs to whole game worlds, is becoming training material for frontier AI, and the buyers in this market keep finding their targets among companies built on games. AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) is acquiring World Labs, whose models generate explorable 3D worlds, for ~$8.2B in stock, announced on Sep 28, 2026. Bloomberg reported on Aug 13, 2026, that Anthropic was in talks to buy Decart for ~$6.0B. Decart’s first model, Oasis, generated a playable version of the sandbox game Minecraft. InvestGame covered the rumor in its W33 issue. Anthropic, which was reported to want Decart’s chip-efficiency software, walked away after due diligence in Sep’26. Google, part of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), took a minority stake in Fenris Creations, the renamed CCP Games, when its management bought the studio back from Pearl Abyss (KOSDAQ: 263750) in May’26, and Google DeepMind now tests its models on an offline version of the space MMO EVE Online for research on long-horizon planning and memory. Roblox acquired the team and technology of real-time video world-model lab Morpheus AI in Jun’26, to combine a video world model with the engine.

The round prices a data position, 2B clips uploaded to Medal since Jun’22. General Intuition sells its models through a commercial API to a small number of partners, with a partner waitlist opened on Sep 29. Vinod Khosla, whose firm led the Series A, said in Jun’26 that a sale of General Intuition at this point “would be a data acquisition, which is sort of uninteresting.”

We will keep tracking world-model deals.

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Notable Transactions

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

US-based audio company Bose has acquired Australia-based game tech company Firelight Technologies, the developer of the FMOD interactive audio middleware, for an undisclosed sum. First released in 1995, FMOD lets game developers make in-game audio respond to gameplay in real time. Firelight joins Bose Audio Technology, and Bose plans to explore VR/AR and automotive uses for FMOD over time. Bose will keep FMOD open and broadly supported, and continue investing in the platform. The deal follows Bose’s acquisition of Austria-based tech company StreamUnlimited in Jun’26.

Japan-based games and entertainment staffing company Confidence Interworks (TSE: 7374) is acquiring a 70% stake in Japan-based mobile games developer flaggs from founder and CEO Naoto Yoshie for an undisclosed sum, with the share transfer set for Oct 1, 2026. Yoshie held 81.46% before the sale, and Cygames, which invested in flaggs in Oct’21, keeps its 15% stake. Confidence Interworks is moving beyond staffing into game development and operations, drawing on flaggs’ game-app patents and its generative-AI development workflow. Its live title is the romance life-sim Obey Me! Till Death Do Us Part, launched in Dec’25. Revenue at flaggs halved YoY through Sep’25, when it posted a third consecutive operating loss and ended with negative net assets.

Japan-based PC & Console games developer Grasshopper Manufacture became independent of NetEase (NASDAQ: NTES) on Oct 1, 2026, with board changes underway and no new shareholder named. Founded in 1998 by CEO Goichi “Suda51” Suda, the studio makes stylized action games including the No More Heroes series. NetEase bought Grasshopper from GungHo Online Entertainment (TSE: 3765) under a share transfer agreement signed on May 31, 2021. Grasshopper self-published the sci-fi action-adventure Romeo Is a Dead Man on PC and Consoles in Feb’26, and says that self-publishing know-how now gives it a broad range of options as an independent developer.

US-based media and entertainment investment firm Shamrock Capital is acquiring US-based creative agency Saylor through its Clover Fund I for an undisclosed sum, and is combining it with gaming creative agency Mutiny, which Shamrock acquired in Feb’26. Saylor, founded in 2021 by former Netflix and Disney executive Will Trowbridge, runs social-first campaigns built around fandoms for clients including Netflix, Disney and Hilton. Mutiny, launched by Trailer Park Group in 2022, markets games for clients including Xbox, Riot Games and Ubisoft, and has run global campaigns for Xbox Game Pass. Mutiny will become Saylor’s dedicated gaming division, alongside its creator studio FLEET and production studio Elevado. Trowbridge will lead the combined agency, and Mutiny CEO Geordie Larratt-Smith will become Chief Commercial Officer while continuing to run Mutiny.

VENTURE FINANCING

US-based audio AI company Modulate has raised $25m in a round led by Future Ventures, with participation from Hyperplane and Lakestar. Lakestar led Modulate’s $30m Series A in Aug’22, and the new round brings total funding to $60m. Modulate started in games: its ToxMod voice-moderation tool has moderated voice chat in the first-person shooter series Call of Duty since 2023. Its models now analyze more than 10 million hours of audio a month, and the company is extending them to fraud and deepfake detection and to supervising AI voice agents. The funds go to AI research, developer tools, and partnerships. Modulate was founded in 2017 by Mike Pappas, now its chairman, and Carter Huffman, now its CEO.

US-based EdTech game company Notey has raised a $3m Seed round, including a $1m non-dilutive grant from Malta Enterprise. Tivoli Ventures led the round, with Malta Venture Capital co-leading it. In the mobile music-learning game Notey’s World, a real guitar is the controller, and the game listens to the player in real time. Notey counts more than 100,000 consumer users and 60 schools across four school districts. A wholly owned Maltese subsidiary serves as its European base, and the funds also go toward new instruments and hiring in Malta and the US.

Japan-based studio WAKA has raised equity from Japan-based venture capital firm TOKI and loans from Mizuho Bank, part of Mizuho Financial Group (TSE: 8411), and Hokkoku Bank. The new equity was priced above WAKA’s Jun’26 valuation, when it raised $1.6m (JPY 250m) in a round led by Spiral Capital. Cumulative debt and equity funding now stands at $3.2m (JPY 500m). On Roblox, WAKA is publishing the first official games for the comedy-action anime Gintama and the fantasy anime Black Clover, the latter a co-op action game. It has also acquired an existing game with around 2 million daily active users, whose title it keeps confidential. The funds go to further game acquisitions, global development, and growth of existing titles. WAKA was founded in 2023 by CEO Keita Noda, then aged 15.

US-based world-building studio Stone Kite has secured undisclosed funding from Griffin Gaming Partners, its co-founders and angel investors. It was co-founded by Jason Jones, the Bungie co-founder who created the sci-fi shooters Halo and Destiny, and by novelist and comics writer Margaret Stohl, its CEO. The studio creates original IP designed to span comics, fiction, film and television. Its first, and so far only, IP, One Zero One, about a war between humanity and an army of AI-driven robot soldiers, debuted as a four-part comic series. The studio is working with more than 250 creators from film, television, comics and literature.

South Korea-based MMORPG developer Jade Dragon Games has raised an undisclosed sum in a Seed round from Mainstreet Ventures and CRIT Ventures, the venture capital arm of Com2uS (KOSDAQ: 078340). The studio was founded in 2026 by CEO Lee Jun-seok, formerly CTO of Lionheart Studio, developer of the MMORPG Odin: Valhalla Rising, with developers from the MMORPGs Lost Ark and Night Crows. Its first title, Project D, is a medieval-fantasy MMORPG with PC and mobile cross-play, monster taming and large-scale guild battles. Development is due to be completed by 2028, with the game set to launch first in Korea and Taiwan before a wider Asia-Pacific release.

NON-DILUTIVE FINANCING

Turkey-based mobile user-acquisition financing provider Leus Capital has launched Cohort Purchasing, which it calls the first platform of its kind for mobile studios. Instead of lending against a studio’s future revenue, Leus buys the future economic value of individual user-acquisition cohorts upfront. It prices each offer from back-tested forecasts of a cohort’s revenue up to Week 52, and can assess a cohort from as early as Day 7. In its example, a cohort that cost $100k to acquire and is forecast to earn $150k by Week 52 could draw an offer of $140k today. The studio takes on no debt and gives up no equity, keeps its game, and passes the cohort’s performance risk to Leus.

Public Market Performance

It was a modestly positive week for the tracked universe: of 63 eligible companies, 34 rose, 27 fell, and 2 were flat, with a median move of +0.6%, over the Friday, Sep 25 to Friday, Oct 2 window.

Share Price Signals

Mattel (+14.90%) rose after The Wall Street Journal reported on Oct 1 that brand-licensing company Authentic Brands Group had discussed a takeover offer of more than $20 a share. A person familiar with the talks described them to CNBC as very preliminary, and Mattel declined to comment on market speculation. The report came a day after Mattel named Condé Nast chief executive Roger Lynch as its next CEO, succeeding Ynon Kreiz.

NCSOFT (+11.57%) rose after the MMORPG Aion 2 opened global early access on Steam on Sep 30 and topped Steam’s global sales chart, ranking first in 12 countries, with a peak of 171,530 concurrent players. Early access requires a paid founder’s pack, and the full global launch on Oct 5 will be free-to-play.

NEXON (-13.83%) fell as its special dividend of JPY 415 a share, announced in Aug’26, went ex-dividend on Sep 29, when the shares dropped JPY 442.5. Adjusted for the payout, the shares fell 0.6%.

Remedy Entertainment (-9.51%) fell after Inderes cut its rating from Buy to Accumulate on Sep 28 and raised its price target to EUR 23.00 from EUR 21.00. Inderes said the action-adventure Control Resonant was selling well but had not reached blockbuster scale after its Sep 24 launch, when Steam players peaked at ~41,000, and that physical copies only arrive on Oct 15.

The catalysts behind the week’s largest moves are below.

What moved them

• Firy (+20.1%) Formerly Skillz, rose on no company-specific news. The move came on Sep 22 on about five times normal volume, a week after it named Avenue Capital’s Marc Lasry to its board.

• Remedy Entertainment (+10.0%) Rose into the Sep 24 launch of Control Resonant, which passed 34,000 concurrent Steam players, about four times the original Control’s peak, and hit first place on Steam’s bestseller chart.

• Tencent (+4.2%) Rose after it launched its Hy Image 3.5 Preview image-generation model on Sep 22, into the Yuanbao chatbot. Its Hong Kong shares gained over 5% that day as Alibaba held its own AI conference.

• NACON (-13.0%) Fell after it set out a restructuring plan under court-supervised recovery on Sep 22: $35.5m (EUR 31m) of new equity plus creditor haircuts that will heavily dilute existing holders.

• The Trade Desk (-9.5%) Fell as passive selling tied to its S&P 500 removal kept weighing on the stock, two weeks after it announced a 15% workforce cut. Shares are down about 65% this year.

• Nintendo (-6.7%) Fell as UBS downgraded the stock from Neutral to Sell on Sep 25, cutting its target to JPY 5,500 from JPY 7,800. The figure is for the US ADR (OTC: NTDOY) in dollars, and the move is overstated by the ADR’s own yen exposure.

Also in the top five: Frontier Developments +4.9% and Paradox Interactive +4.5% on the upside; Enad Global 7 -10.0% and Azerion -8.2% on the downside.

The rest of this issue is premium content, unlocked for all readers this week.

The full deck

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Sixteen slides: the full deal list with descriptions and links, the news roundup, the Xbox restructuring, Kingnet-Wemade and Digital Hearts deep dives, the PC/Console Pulse with Control Resonant and Silent Hill: Townfall, indices, movers and this week’s press and podcasts.

Remedy, in more detail

Control Resonant launched on Sep 24 at $59.99, with a $69.99 Deluxe edition that added two days of PS5 early access from Sep 22. Alinea Analytics estimates $15.8m in gross revenue and 285k copies across Steam, PlayStation and Xbox, with 270k players. Steam took 53% of revenue, PlayStation 42% and Xbox 6%, though Xbox reports about two days late, so its share is understated. Daily active players reached 146k on Steam, 91k on PS5 and 14k on Xbox on Friday Sep 25, and 279k on Saturday.

The launch came with 2 million wishlists across platforms two days before release and a Steam peak of 34.3k concurrent players, Remedy’s highest (SteamDB). Critics sit at OpenCritic 84 from 86 reviews, 86% recommending, and back the switch to melee combat and an open-world Manhattan from the first game’s gunplay and corridors. Players are at 88% positive from 3,318 Steam reviews, with audio desync, GPU crashes and a forced 90GB re-download leading the complaints.

Remedy bought the Control rights back from 505 Games in February 2024 for up to $18.5m (EUR 17m) and self-published the sequel, co-financed and co-produced by Annapurna Pictures. Tencent holds 14.8% and lent Remedy $16.8m (EUR 15m) as a convertible loan at 8% PIK in October 2024. Control Resonant follows FBC: Firebreak, the 2025 co-op shooter Remedy wrote down by €14.9m.

PC/Console Pulse, with Alinea Analytics

Releases of the last two weeks ranked by gross revenue, plus the week’s biggest riser, across Steam, PlayStation and Xbox on Alinea Analytics estimates for Friday 18 to Friday 25 September. All six are franchises, and one live-service title, EA Sports FC 27, grossed $231.2m against $73.8m for the other five combined.

• EA Sports FC 27 (EA Sports / EA Canada) grossed $231.2m and sold 2.73 million copies in its first full week, as early access from Sep 18 ran into the $69.99 standard launch on Sep 25: 2.4 times its first day. PlayStation took 79%. It also led the table on Twitch with 8.78 million hours watched, while Steam players sit at 56% positive.

• Marvel’s Wolverine (Sony / Insomniac, PS5 exclusive, out Sep 15) grossed $43.6m and sold 570k copies in the week, with a critic score of 78.

• Control Resonant (Remedy, out Sep 24) opened at $15.8m and 285k copies, with 1.66 million Twitch hours, critic score 84 and 88% positive on Steam.

• Silent Hill: Townfall (Konami / Screen Burn Interactive, out Sep 24) took $5.8m and 116k copies but drew 4.65 million Twitch hours, second only to FC 27.

• Dune: Awakening (Funcom) was the week’s biggest paid riser at +$4.1m to $5.1m, after it reached PS5 and Xbox on Sep 22 and went 50% off on Steam.

• Graveyard Keeper 2 (tinyBuild / Lazy Bear Games, out Sep 22) grossed $3.5m on 205k copies, with a critic score of 83 and 84% positive on Steam.

Free-to-play Aniimo (+$3.0m) and Warframe (+$2.0m) are out of scope.

Attention against revenue for the same six titles. FC 27 is alone in the breakout corner, buzz and money together. Silent Hill: Townfall is the week’s clearest buzz-led launch, with hype above sales.

Silent Hill: Townfall

A psychological horror set in a 1990s Scottish coastal town, and the first Silent Hill played fully in first person. It launched on Sep 24 on PS5 and PC at $49.99, with a Deluxe Edition adding 48 hours of early access, an artbook and the soundtrack, co-published by Konami and Annapurna Interactive. PlayStation took 70% of its $5.8m and Steam 30%; daily players reached 66k on PS5 and 41k on Steam on Friday Sep 25, and 117k on Saturday.

Critics are at 81 on both OpenCritic (76 reviews) and Metacritic, and Polygon ranks it below Konami’s Silent Hill f (Metacritic 86). Steam players are at 67% positive from 2,244 reviews, with stutter, crashes and forced stealth leading the complaints; Alinea’s review read is to wait for patches. Its Steam peak of 8.4k concurrent compares with Control Resonant’s 34.3k. The developer, Glasgow-based Screen Burn Interactive, has 30 employees and is owned by its two founders, Jon McKellan and Omar Khan; it was known as No Code (Stories Untold, Observation) until July 2025. The series stood at 17.8 million copies to June 2026 (Konami).

Indices, week and year-to-date

Public-market moves are Friday-to-Friday, 18 Sep to 25 Sep close, across InvestGame’s six tracked gaming indices, AdTech included. Mid Cap Mobile +1.7%, Large Cap Diversified +1.4% and Mid Cap PC & Console +1.2% rose; Large Cap Mobile fell 1.7% and Large Cap PC & Console 0.3%, with AdTech flat at +0.1%. Year to date, AdTech remains by far the worst-performing segment at -50.1%, followed by Large Cap Diversified at -24.2%, Large Cap Mobile at -18.4%, Mid Cap Mobile at -12.9% and Mid Cap PC & Console at -5.7%. Large Cap PC & Console is the only index above its January level, at +1.9%.

Deals of the week

InvestGame tracked 11 announced deals disclosing $248.5m this week, close to last week’s $242.3m across 14 deals: 2 public offerings for $216.5m, 6 private investments for $29.4m and 3 M&A deals for $2.6m, plus one fundraising not counted in the total.

The largest fresh deal was Embracer Group’s $203.9m (SEK 2.0B) two-year revolving credit facility, led by SEB alongside DNB, Nordea and Swedbank, which consolidates bilateral loans ahead of the planned 2027 Fellowship Entertainment spin-off. Türkiye’s Circle Games raised a $25m Series A led by Tencent, taking total funding to $32.25m, to expand Jelly Escape and keep scaling Sort Express. Denmark’s Trophy Games is buying Paris-based Playrion (Airlines Manager, Airport Simulator) from Paradox Interactive for $2.6m (EUR 2.25m) upfront plus a 9%-of-net-revenue earn-out, its largest deal to date. Russia’s state owner put World of Tanks developer Lesta Games up for sale, and Undead Labs closed its separation from Microsoft, keeping the State of Decay IP; as a closing, it sits outside the week’s count. Outside the total, Bessemer Venture Partners closed $5.75B across a seed and early-stage fund and a growth fund.

The two largest figures of the week update older deals. Kingnet is paying about $298.0m for 49% of Neosphere, the holding company behind the consortium taking 40.25% of Wemade, which would leave the Chinese publisher that fought Wemade over Legend of Mir royalties until a settlement earlier this year with an indirect ~19.7% of the IP’s owner, provided the Oct 30 closing completes. In Japan, Digital Hearts’ $75.4m (JPY 11.86B) MBO tender succeeded at JPY 1,060 a share, a 41.0% premium to the pre-announcement close, taking founder Eiichi Miyazawa’s vehicle Sandbox and his own holding to 90.20% once the Sep 30 settlement closes.

Share price moves are Friday close to Friday close, 18 to 25 September. This digest is published for information only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

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MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

[UPD] China-based multiplatform games developer and publisher Kingnet Network (SZSE: 002517) is acquiring 49% of Neosphere for $298.0m. Neosphere is the Hong Kong holding company behind NeoPulse, which is buying a controlling stake in South Korea-based games developer Wemade (KOSDAQ: 112040), covered in Jul’26. Wemade develops and publishes MMORPGs, including Night Crows and Legend of Ymir, and licenses its Legend of Mir IP to other publishers. The other 51% of Neosphere stays with the seller, Nexpulse, a separate vehicle of Hong Kong investor Mok Pui Ming, who remains NeoPulse’s controlling owner. The funds pay for NeoPulse’s purchase of founder Park Kwan-ho’s 39.33% stake, due to complete on Oct 30, 2026, and give Kingnet an indirect ~19.7% of Wemade. After that closing, Nexpulse will seek an exclusive Legend of Mir license from Wemade, with the territory and term still to be agreed, for Neosphere to pass on to Kingnet, and will compensate Kingnet if that fails due to its own fault.

[UPD] The management buyout tender offer for Japan-based outsourcing company Digital Hearts Holdings (TSE: 3676) by Sandbox, a vehicle wholly owned by founder and representative chairman Eiichi Miyazawa, has succeeded. Shareholders tendered 11.19 million shares, including 500,000 of Miyazawa’s own, at JPY 1,060 per share, the price set in Aug’26, for JPY 11.86B ($75.4m). That takes Sandbox to 50.17%, and Sandbox and Miyazawa together to 90.20%. Settlement starts Sep 30, 2026. A squeeze-out at the same price follows, after which Sandbox will hold 59.97%, and Miyazawa will hold the remaining 40.03%. Digital Hearts provides game debugging, localization and quality assurance, as well as enterprise software testing through its AGEST unit. On the day it announced the buyout, Digital Hearts also agreed to take over the game-debugging business of Japan-based outsourcing company IMAGICA GEEQ, a subsidiary of IMAGICA GROUP (TSE: 6879), from Nov 1, 2026.

Denmark-based mobile games developer Trophy Games (CPH: TGAMES) is acquiring France-based mobile games developer Playrion from Sweden-based games publisher Paradox Interactive (STO: PDX) for $2.6m (EUR 2.25m) in cash upfront, plus an earn-out of 9% of Playrion’s net revenue for the three years after closing. It is Trophy Games’ largest acquisition to date, funded from existing cash. The Paris studio has ~30 staff and ~$4.6m (EUR 4.0m) in annual revenue from the airline management sim Airlines Manager and the airport tycoon game Airport Simulator: First Class. Paradox acquired Playrion in 2020. Trophy Games plans a new simulation series using the Airport Simulator technology, the approach it took with the airline management game Airline Manager 4, which it acquired in 2021.

US-based mobile games publisher Scopely, owned by Savvy Games Group, has made a strategic investment of an undisclosed size in China-based games developer Bokura through its Singapore-based arm, Scopely South East Asia, completed on Sep 23, 2026. Founded in Shanghai in 2021 by Chen Min, who led the development of the action MMORPG Dragon Nest Mobile, the ~150-person studio is developing the open-world MMORPG Blue Protocol: Star Resonance for PC and mobile, built on IP licensed from Bandai Namco (TSE: 7832). Tencent (SEHK: 700) has held 20% since the founding round in 2021. In Dec’24 Scopely bought Project Comet, a game based on Marvel IP in development at Chengfeng Studio of Perfect World (SZSE: 002624), for $34.5m and took a minority stake in the team’s new company.

[UPD] US-based PC & Console games developer Undead Labs has closed its separation from Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and now operates as an independent, employee-owned studio that keeps its IP, back catalog and runway funding. Microsoft announced the divestment in Jul’26 alongside ~3,200 Xbox job cuts. Founded in Seattle in 2009, the studio makes the open-world zombie survival series State of Decay, and State of Decay 3 will launch day one on Xbox Game Pass through a new publisher. UK-based Splash Damage had been in talks to acquire the studio before that deal fell through.

VENTURE FINANCING

Türkiye-based mobile games developer Circle Games has raised $25m in a Series A led by Tencent (SEHK: 700), with participation from existing investors a16z Speedrun, APY Ventures, BITKRAFT Ventures and e2vc. The round brings total funding to $32.25m after a $7.25m Seed round led by BITKRAFT in Jul’25. Since then, the studio has launched the 3D sorting puzzle Sort Express globally and released the puzzle game Jelly Escape, going from a pre-launch prototype to eight-figure revenue in one year, according to BITKRAFT partner Jasper Brand. The funds will take Jelly Escape into new markets and at least double headcount. Circle Games was founded in 2024 by CEO Göktürk Balıkcı, CPO Mustafa Özdemir, Mehmet Ay and Arda Özarslan.

US-based mobile games developer Topdog has raised $2.5m in a Seed round led by Boston Seed Capital, with participation from The Raine Group, Bullpen Capital, Versus Ventures, Spoondrift Capital and Permit Ventures. The round brings total funding to $4.1m after a $1.6m pre-Seed round from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Topdog makes real-money skill games in which players compete against each other in real time rather than against the house, including the multiplayer basketball game Basketball Hustle. The funds go to user acquisition and new multiplayer sports titles. Topdog was founded by Aman Agarwal and Jatin Narang.

Italy-based corporate training platform Gamindo has raised $1.6m (EUR 1.4m) in a Seed round from Club degli Investitori, Vento Ventures, Doorway and Zanichelli Venture. Gamindo turns training courses into interactive, game-based modules for more than 50 corporate clients. Angel investors include King co-founder Riccardo Zacconi, former Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) CFO Luca Maestri and the four co-founders of Bending Spoons. The funds go to product and sales hires and international expansion.

China-based games developer Feijiu Technology has raised an undisclosed sum from Lilith Games and another investor. Founded in Guangzhou in 2026 by Dai Yanqi, a long-time lead designer on the PC MMORPG Fantasy Westward Journey at NetEase (NASDAQ: NTES), and former NetEase colleague Sun Qinying, the studio is building a self-evolving, AI-driven virtual world.

PUBLIC OFFERINGS

Sweden-based games publisher Embracer Group (STO: EMBRAC B) has secured a $203.9m (SEK 2.0B) revolving credit facility with a two-year term and an option to extend by two more years, arranged by SEB (STO: SEB A) as coordinating mandated lead arranger with DNB (OSE: DNB), Nordea (HEL: NDA FI) and Swedbank (STO: SWED A). The facility replaces several bilateral loans with different maturities and terms, at a lower credit margin. Embracer plans to replace it after the spin-off of Fellowship Entertainment, its AAA and licensing arm, planned for 2027. As of Jun 30, 2026, Embracer held $509.4m (SEK 5.0B) in cash against $155.5m (SEK 1.5B) of liabilities.

Japan-based mobile games developer Drecom (TSE: 3793) has secured a $12.6m (JPY 2.0B) unsecured three-year syndicated term loan from seven lenders, arranged by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. The loan, to be drawn on Sep 30, 2026, runs until Sep'29 and will fund working capital. Its covenant requires Drecom to avoid a consolidated net loss in two consecutive fiscal years, starting with the year ending Mar'27. Drecom develops smartphone games, including the dungeon RPG Wizardry Variants Daphne.

FUNDRAISING

US-based VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners has closed $5.75B across two funds: $1.75B for Seed and early-stage investments and $4.0B for growth. In games, Bessemer has backed the mobile developer Wildlife Studios, the chat platform Discord, the fantasy football game Sorare, the Roblox (NYSE: RBLX) developer Gamefam and the Türkiye-based puzzle studio Good Job Games. Its games exits include Scopely, sold to Savvy Games Group for $4.9B in 2023, and Twitch, acquired by Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) in 2014.

Public Market Performance

It was a flat week for the tracked universe: of 62 eligible companies, 30 rose, 31 fell, and 1 was flat, with a median move of -0.1%, over the Friday Sep 18 to Friday Sep 25 window.

Share Price Signals

Remedy Entertainment (+10.00%) rose into the Sep 24 launch of the action-adventure Control Resonant, which passed 34,000 concurrent players on Steam, about four times the peak of the original Control, and reached second place on Steam's global bestseller chart behind EA Sports FC 27. The game had 88% positive user reviews on Steam and a 9.6/10 rating on the PlayStation Store. Before launch, it had drawn more than 2 million Steam wishlists.

Tencent (+4.20%) rose after it launched its Hy Image 3.5 Preview image-generation model on Sep 22 and added it to the Yuanbao chatbot and its video-editing and design tools. Shares in Hong Kong gained more than 5% that day as Alibaba held its annual AI conference.

iDreamSky Technology (-11.25%) fell after it was dropped from the S&P Global BMI index in the quarterly rebalance reported on Sep 20.

Nintendo (-6.79%) fell as UBS downgraded the stock from Neutral to Sell on Sep 25 and cut its price target to JPY 5,500 from JPY 7,800. The -6.79% is for the US ADR (OTC: NTDOY) in dollars; the Tokyo shares (TSE: 7974), which UBS covers, fell 2.87% over the week, and the ADR also reflects the yen’s move against the dollar. BNP Paribas Exane started coverage at Neutral on Sep 22.

tinyBuild (-5.66%) fell after its H1’26 results on Sep 24: revenue rose 18% to $20.0m on catalog sales and new launches, but gross profit slipped to $9.8m from $10.4m and adj. EBITDA fell to $3.2m from $4.2m, as royalties on second-party releases and launch marketing rose. The company kept its view that full-year results will be ahead of expectations.

Earnings Calendar: The Week Ahead

It was a mixed week for the tracked universe: 30 of 59 companies rose, with a median move of +0.2%, and four of the six indices fell. The split ran along platform lines. AdTech posted the steepest decline at -4.6%, taking it to -46.4% year-to-date, and both mobile tiers and Large Cap Diversified were lower. Both PC & Console tiers held: Mid Cap PC & Console rose 2.9%, the week’s best index, and Large Cap PC & Console was flat, still the only index above its January level at +1.9%.

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Kakao Games acquires ~40% of social casino developer ME2ON at 3.2x the market price

South Korea-based mobile games developer and publisher Kakao Games (KOSDAQ: 293490) is acquiring 39.56% of South Korea-based social casino and casual games developer ME2ON (KOSDAQ: 201490) for $72.1m (KRW 98.0B) through two transactions its board approved on Sep 15. It is buying 7,011,390 existing shares, a 21.43% block, from founder and CEO Son Chang-wook and eight related parties at KRW 10,000 a share, $51.6m (KRW 70.1B) in total. ME2ON is also issuing 9,817,118 new shares at KRW 2,842 per share, totaling $20.5m (KRW 27.9B), of which KRW 19.2B funds working capital and KRW 8.7B repays debt. Together, the two transactions make Kakao Games the largest shareholder, with its own appointees replacing the board at closing. Both transactions settle on Nov 16, 2026, subject to Korea Fair Trade Commission clearance, and the new shares list on Dec 1.

The KRW 10,000 paid to the sellers is 3.2x the KRW 3,110 at which ME2ON closed on Sep 14, a 221.5% control premium. At the block price, ME2ON’s equity is valued at $240.7m (KRW 327.2B) on a 100% basis, 2.7x FY2025 revenue of $85.1m (KRW 120.9B), and 26.0x EBIT (operating profit) of $8.9m (KRW 12.6B). The day before the announcement, the market valued the same equity at $74.9m (KRW 101.8B), 0.8x revenue and 8.1x EBIT. By comparison, Netmarble (KOSPI: 251270) paid $2.19B for social casino developer SpinX Games in 2021 at ~5.0x revenue, and Aristocrat (ASX: ALL) paid $990m for Big Fish Games in 2017 at 2.2x revenue and 11.9x adj. EBITDA.

Founded in 2010 and listed on KOSDAQ in 2016, ME2ON develops the social casino apps Full House Casino, with more than 8 million App Store and Google Play downloads, Fulpot Poker, and Classic Vegas Casino, while its 45.1%-owned Ghost Studio (KOSDAQ: 950190) develops casual titles such as the card game TriPeaks Journey and the match-3 puzzle Match Miracle: Triple Match 3D. FY2025 revenue split: 61% games, $51.5m (KRW 73.3B), from ME2ON’s own social casino titles and the casual games of Ghost Studio; 31% talent management and drama production, $26.4m (KRW 37.5B), through Ghost Studio Entertainment; and 8% webtoon and web novel production and platforms, $7.1m (KRW 10.0B), through Bluepic and Metoon&Novel. North America accounted for 65% of games revenue in Q2’26. Revenue rose 28% in won terms in FY2025 after a 13% fall in FY2024, but EBIT fell every year from $30.1m (KRW 34.5B) in FY2021, a 31% margin, to $8.7m (KRW 11.8B) in FY2024, then recovered 7% in won terms to $8.9m (KRW 12.6B) in FY2025, a 10% margin. FY2025 marked the turn, continuing into H1’26: revenue of $35.2m (KRW 47.9B) with EBIT of $6.4m (KRW 8.7B), an 18% margin.

This is the first acquisition under Kakao Games’ new owners. Japan’s LY Corporation took control in June through a ~$370m restructuring and appointed co-CEOs Kim Tae-hwan, formerly of Nexon (TSE: 3659) and LINE Games, and Lee Si-woo. Kakao Games’ FY2025 revenue fell 26% to $327.0m (KRW 465.0B) with an operating loss of $27.9m (KRW 39.6B), and Kim told investors in August that the company was reviewing more than 10 domestic and international targets, starting with deals in the tens of billions of won rather than the hundreds of billions. As Lee stated, “This acquisition marks the first step in executing a merger and acquisition strategy with proven business feasibility and profitability under our new leadership, and Kakao Games will continue to pursue M&A for its future.” It follows the Kakao Games-backed Align Studio’s purchase of the ArcheAge MMORPG IP from XL Games for $29.2m (KRW 39.2B) the week before. We will keep tracking Kakao Games’ deal activity: two acquisitions in two weeks under new owners make it a new buyer on the M&A scene, and it now sits on InvestGame’s Active Strategic Buyers list.

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Notable Transactions

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

UK-based games developer and publisher Everplay Group (AIM: EVPL) has increased its stake in Super Media Group, the parent of UK-based PC & Console games developer Bulkhead, from 20% to 28% for $2.7m (GBP 2.0m). It exercised an option agreed in Dec’25, when it subscribed for the first 20% as Bulkhead’s founders carved the studio out of Tencent-owned Splash Damage. Bulkhead’s Unreal Engine 5 multiplayer shooter Wardogs, published by Team17, sold more than 1 million copies on its first day in Early Access on Sep 10 and 2 million within five days, passed 400,000 concurrent players over its first weekend, and broke the group sales record Hell Let Loose: Vietnam had set weeks earlier. The step-up was disclosed with Everplay’s H1 FY26 results, in which the board now expects FY26 revenue and adj. EBITDA materially ahead of the $236.1m (GBP 175.2m) and $68.3m (GBP 50.7m) consensus. Everplay’s shares have risen 46.5% since the day before the launch, from 289p to 423.5p at the Sep 18 close.

Czech Republic-based PC & Console games developer and publisher Bohemia Interactive has acquired a minority stake in Poland-based games developer Enjoy Studio for an undisclosed sum, its first investment in a Polish studio. Bohemia publishes Enjoy’s co-op first-person survival RPG Everwind, which has sold more than 300,000 copies at $24.99 since entering Early Access on Mar 17, 2026, and the remastered platformer Space Tail: Definitive Edition, released in Aug’26. Founded in 2020 in Warsaw, Enjoy joined the Bohemia Incubator publishing program in 2024. The stake funds Everwind’s full release and console versions, with Enjoy keeping its creative independence.

VENTURE FINANCING

US-based family active-play console maker Nex has raised more than $150m in equity and debt, including a Series E co-led by Baillie Gifford and BAI Capital, with NBA Investments, Logitech (NASDAQ: LOGI), Medici Capital Partners and The Raine Group. Roughly half of the total is a new credit facility from J.P. Morgan. The Nex Playground motion-tracking console launched in Dec’23 and has sold at $299 since Apr’26 after two price increases driven by memory chip costs. It has sold more than 1 million units through 7,000 US stores, and its Play Pass subscriber base has grown 7x in 18 months to near 1 million. Founded in 2017 by CEO David Lee, the maker of the basketball-training app HomeCourt, Nex raised $40m by its $25m Series B in Sep’21 and, per Lee, turned profitable in 2025. The capital funds inventory and launches in Germany this year and in Japan and South Korea in 2027. Former Niantic CFO Jeff Shouger joins as CFO, and former EA chief creative officer Bing Gordon joins the board.

Israel-based database company Keewano has raised $12.0m in a Seed round led by Hetz Ventures, with a16z Speedrun, Remagine Ventures, DIG Ventures and angel investors. The round coincides with the general availability of KeewanoDB, an event-sequence database built for AI agents to investigate player behavior, churn, and retention. It stores every user’s full event history in order and queries 250 million events at once. Founded in 2024 in Tel Aviv by CEO Mark Kardashov, COO Dima Karger, a former general manager at Plarium, CTO Pavel Bibergal, Plarium’s former CTO, and Vitaly Bukhovsky, the 20-person team will use the funding to expand in the US.

India-based PC & Console publisher 1312 Interactive has raised $1.0m in a Seed round led by ChimeraVC and T-Accelerate Capital, with Ventana Ventures and angel investors, after an undisclosed pre-Seed round from angels in Feb’25 that InvestGame covered. Founded in 2024 in Hyderabad by Deepak Gurijala, the founder of Street Lamp Games, and Raviteja Mantena, 1312 targets six to eight indie and AA titles a year for global audiences. The 2.5D action-platformer Winds of Arcana: Ruination shipped in Nov’25 and the village romance RPG Palm Sugar: A Village Story in Aug’26, with the possession puzzle-adventure Souls of Bombarika and the co-op party game We Are So Cooked, now due in Jan’27. The capital funds marketing, QA, localization, and production support, and the launch of 1312 Playground, a community platform for early player testing.

PUBLIC OFFERINGS

Japan-based reward-marketing platform operator Skyfall (TSE: 625A) has listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market, raising $21.7m (JPY 3.46B) at JPY 1,500 per share, with SBI Securities, a subsidiary of SBI Holdings (TSE: 8473) as the lead underwriter. The offer comprised 1.1 million new shares and 1.2 million shares sold by existing holders, led by CEO Hasegawa Tomokazu, and valued Skyfall at $75.3m (JPY 12.0B). Shares opened 17.3% above the offer price and closed the first day at JPY 1,523, up 1.5%. Skyfall’s SKYFLAG platform sells reward ads to mobile games and apps that pay out only when a user completes an in-app action, and the company also runs the free-to-play Texas hold’em poker game, Poker Chase. Revenue grew 26% to $101.7m (JPY 16.2B) in the year to Sep’25, with net income of $2.8m (JPY 447m). Net primary proceeds of $9.6m (JPY 1.5B) fund hiring and marketing in the US and Europe from FY27, after a Korean entry in Aug’25.

EARNINGS REPORTS

Everplay Group reported H1 FY26 revenue of $90.1m (GBP 66.9m), down 8%, and adj. EBITDA of $12.4m (GBP 9.2m), down from $25.9m (GBP 19.2m), as Team17 revenue fell 16% on a release slate weighted to the second half while StoryToys grew 43% to $21.4m (GBP 15.9m). Cash was $76.9m (GBP 57.1m), and the interim dividend was 1.1p a share. The board expects FY26 revenue and adj. EBITDA materially ahead of the $236.1m (GBP 175.2m) and $68.3m (GBP 50.7m) consensus after the launch of Wardogs.

Huuuge Games reported Q2’26 revenue of $50.9m, down 13.4% YoY, adj. EBITDA of $19.8m at a 39% margin and cash of $137.0m at Jun 30, with direct-to-consumer sales at a record 42.5% of revenue. Guidance is unchanged for a slight FY26 revenue decline with the adj. EBITDA margin at least flat on 2025.

Public Market Performance

It was a mixed week for the tracked universe: of 61 eligible companies, 32 rose, and 29 fell, with a median move of 0.2% over the Friday, Sep 11 to Friday, Sep 18 window.

Share Price Signals

Everplay Group (+19.97%) rose over the week around its H1 FY26 results on Sep 15: revenue fell 8% to $90.1m (GBP 66.9m) and adj. EBITDA to $12.4m (GBP 9.2m) as Team17 revenue dropped 16% and StoryToys grew 43%, but the board guided FY26 revenue and adj. EBITDA materially ahead of market expectations on the multiplayer shooter Wardogs, which has sold more than 2 million copies since its Sep 10 Early Access launch. On Sep 18, RBC Capital Markets kept its outperform rating and raised its price target to 545p from 455p, lifting its FY revenue forecast 15% to $283.0m (GBP 211.3m) while pushing the game’s full release to 2028.

Huuuge Games (+9.26%) rose after its Q2’26 results on Sep 16: revenue fell 13.4% YoY to $50.9m against a $51m consensus, and adj. EBITDA was $19.8m at a 39% margin, with guidance unchanged for a slight FY26 revenue decline. The move followed the $120m share buyback announced with the results, equal to 164% of 2025 free cash flow, for up to 16.4 million shares at $7.30 a share, 36.7% of the share capital, and direct-to-consumer sales reaching a record 42.5% of revenue.

Remedy Entertainment (-7.53%) fell on Sep 18 as the review embargo for the action-adventure Control Resonant lifted six days before its Sep 24 launch: the game scored 84 on both Metacritic and OpenCritic, 8/10 at IGN and 9/10 at GameSpot, and closed down 13.5%, one of the largest declines on the Helsinki exchange in that session.

11 bit studios (-5.96%) fell after BM Bank Millennium cut its price target to PLN 145.50 from PLN 167.00 on Sep 16, maintaining its accumulate rating, citing lower financial forecasts and an earlier cost underestimate, while noting $22.2m (PLN 84.6m) in net cash at the end of Q2’26.

Earnings Calendar: The Week Ahead

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The headline numbers are not kind. The median company saw revenue decline year-over-year in both regions: -7.3% in the West and -5.8% in Asia. Both regional indices are down year-to-date, West -15.4% and Asia -7.8%. Only 4 of the 11 stocks are up for the year (as of the 28 Aug close).

But the median hides the story. Five companies did grow, and almost every one of them grew because of a specific game you have heard of.

The games that carried Q2

Subnautica 2 (KRAFTON). KRAFTON’s revenue nearly doubled, +94.9% YoY to $913.6M, on the back of Subnautica 2’s May launch: 5M+ units sold within 22 days of Early Access. PC revenue rose 155.1% and console revenue 143.3%. Mobile grew a far more modest 5.5%.

Lineage Classic (NCSoft). NCSoft’s revenue more than doubled, +101.5% YoY to $545.7M. PC revenue jumped 216% to $243.5M, led by Lineage Classic’s $131.4M. The second engine was M&A: the consolidation of JustPlay and Moving Eye pushed Mobile Casual to $120.2M, now 22% of the total.

Disney Solitaire (Playtika). Playtika posted the largest reported growth in the West, +5.0% YoY to $731.1M. Underneath, legacy titles like Bingo Blitz keep declining (-9.5%), while Disney Solitaire grew +288.6% to $142.4M and SuperPlay turned Adjusted-EBITDA positive.

MapleStory and ARC Raiders (Nexon). Nexon grew a smaller +1.9% YoY to $760.9M, but the mix is telling: MapleStory posted a record quarter at +63% YoY, ARC Raiders brought ~$115M in revenue with cumulative units above 16.3 million, while the legacy big-3 franchises combined fell 5%.

MTG rounds out the growers with +1.9% reported, though organically the group grew +6%, its seventh straight quarter of organic growth. Casual District was up +29% organically and Midcore +1%; a 5pp negative FX impact pulled reported group growth down to +1.9%.

The flip side is just as concrete:

• Shift Up revenue halved, -50.4% YoY, against last year’s Stellar Blade PC launch. Stellar Blade itself was down 86.6% YoY. NIKKE, meanwhile, grew 32.4% QoQ.

• Kakao Games mobile revenue fell 47.8% YoY on legacy-title decay and no new launches; total revenue -35.2%.

• G5 Entertainment was down -18.9%, with Jewels moved into “Harvest Mode” and headcount cut to ~550.

Revenue growth by company, Q2 2026. Bars beyond ±25–30% are capped at the true value shown. Source: InvestGame Mobile Gaming Earnings Report, Q2 2026.

Growing got Playtika sold off. Shrinking got Stillfront a 29% rally.

This is the part that makes the quarter interesting beyond the game titles.

Playtika grew revenue 5%, grew EBITDA 23% and expanded its margin by 4.2 points, to 28.2% from 24.0%. The stock fell -15.4% on earnings day, the weakest reaction across all eleven peers. The reason was guidance: FY26 revenue was held at $2.75–2.85B but flagged to land toward the low end on cautious consumer spending.

Stillfront’s revenue fell 7.8% YoY. The stock rose +29.3%, the strongest reaction in the group. What the market bought was a 3-point Adjusted EBITDAC margin expansion, 10% organic growth in the key franchises for a second straight quarter, and the settlement of the Gameberry royalty overhang. Separately, Stillfront settled the remaining Gameberry Labs earnout in a single $26.5M payment on 3 June.

The pattern holds across the set. 7 of 11 stocks had a positive earnings-day reaction (three of them measured on the next trading day, where the release-day move was flat) despite mixed revenue trends, and the market rewarded margin expansion and resolved overhangs as much as top-line growth. KRAFTON, with its blockbuster quarter, got +6.2%. Nexon, with +1.9% revenue growth and operating income down 17%, got +19.9%, driven by a record MapleStory quarter and a ~$2.0B special dividend announcement.

Year-to-date, the gains are stock-specific, not sector-wide. Nazara Technologies (+31.4%) and Kakao Games (-46.3%) are the best and worst performers, and MTG (+17.0%) stands out in the West while Playtika sits at -41.3%.

The West is leveraged. Asia is sitting on cash.

The number that will shape the next twelve months of deal-making is not revenue. It is the balance sheet.

Three of the five Western companies carry net debt: Playtika, MTG and Stillfront. Only one of six Asian companies does, Kakao Games. The extremes are stark: Playtika’s net debt stands at $2.07B, while Nexon holds $4.98B in net cash. KRAFTON has $1.43B, NCSoft $1.07B.

That imbalance shapes what each region can do with capital, from buybacks to acquisitions. And in Q2 it already showed up: the new-asset acquisitions came from Asia (NCSoft, Shift Up), while the Western moves were a refinancing (Stillfront), a strategic review (Playtika), an earnout settlement (Stillfront) and an IPO filing to monetize a studio (MTG).

The full scoreboard, the cash map, every buyback and dividend, and all of the quarter’s deals are below.

What’s behind the paywall

• The 11-company scoreboard: revenue, YoY/QoQ, EBITDA margin, earnings-day reaction, YTD share price

• Cash and net debt for every company, plus free cash flow and CapEx

• Every 2026 buyback and dividend, including Nexon’s ~$2.32B payout and Playtika’s suspension

• All Q2 deals: NCSoft’s $202M JustPlay acquisition, Shift Up buying Shinji Mikami’s studio, LY Corp taking control of Kakao Games, MTG’s PlaySimple IPO filing, Playtika’s strategic review

• What each company guided for Q3

• The full 14-slide PDF with company-by-company earnings cards

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Notes on the data.

Quarterly data as of June 2026; companies sorted by revenue size. Nazara reports Q1 FY27 (Apr–Jun 2026). Playtika and PLAYSTUDIOS report Adj. EBITDA; Stillfront reports Adj. EBITDAC, a different metric blended into the same averages. Nexon does not disclose EBITDA; the figure shown is derived. Free cash flow = cash flow from operations less CapEx, as each company defines and reports it. NCSoft’s CapEx is not separately disclosed in its quarterly reporting. Earnings signal is the release-day share price move; where that move was negligible (Nexon, KRAFTON, Nazara), the next trading day’s move is shown. Price YTD as of Aug 28, 2026 close. Buyback and dividend data sourced from each company’s investor relations materials, AGM/board bulletins and regulatory filings, 2026 year-to-date through August.

This report is for general information only and does not constitute investment advice or a recommendation to engage in any investment activity. InvestGame makes no warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and accepts no liability for its use. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

InvestGame tracked 14 deals worth $64.4m this week. 6 closed. Below are the top 9.

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Devolver Digital leaves AIM at £0.16 a share, five years after a £1.57 IPO, at ~0.6x revenue

US-based indie games publisher Devolver Digital (AIM: DEVO) is leaving the London stock market. Shareholders voted 90% in favor of canceling the AIM listing from Sep 16, 2026. Alongside the vote, Devolver bought back 4.71% of its shares for $5.0m (GBP 3.7m). The founders, CEO Harry Miller, COO Graeme Struthers, and Nigel Lowrie, hold 31.45% pre-offer, rising to about 33% after the buyback completion. The exit was offered to everyone else at £0.16 per share. That was the closing price on Aug 5, the day before the plan was announced, so at spot with no premium. Shareholders tendered more shares than the $5.0m could purchase, so the offer was scaled back, and each seller sold only part of their holdings. Devolver’s shares are no longer quoted on a public market. A second buyback of up to $5.0m is planned within a year.

The board explains the decision with three reasons:

• Listing costs of ~$1.6m a year.

• A share that barely traded, ~33,000 shares a day in the three months before the announcement.

• A valuation that the directors say does not reflect the business.

At £0.16 per share, Devolver’s equity is valued at $102.0m (GBP 75.6m). The latest reported balance sheet, as of Dec 31, 2025, shows $36.6m of cash and no debt. Since then, Devolver has paid $4.9m in cash toward System Era’s deferred consideration, with a further $2.1m remaining payable in cash and shares. On that pro forma basis, the Enterprise Value is ~$77m. Against FY25 revenue of $107.9m, that is 0.7x EV/Revenue, and 6.8x adj. EBITDA of $11.4m before impairments (10.9x on the $7.1m defined adj. EBITDA, which includes impairments). The business has moved on since: a Jun 26 trading update guided H1’26 revenue at least 60% above H1’25’s $38.8m, with adj. EBITDA in the mid-single-digit millions. That implies that through Jun 30, 2026, there will be at least $131m in revenue and ~$16m in adj. EBITDA, so ~0.6x revenue and ~4.7x adj. EBITDA.

Looking back, Devolver floated in Nov’21 at £1.57 per share, a $950m (GBP 694.6m) market capitalization. It was the second-largest AIM admission by value at the time. Sony (TSE: 6758) took 5% at the float, and NetEase (NASDAQ: NTES) stayed on the register. The current exit price of £0.16 per share is 89.8% below the IPO price of £1.57 per share.

The share price tells the operating story. Revenue peaked in FY22, the year after the IPO, at the tail of the pandemic boom in premium PC & Console games. It fell by a third in FY23 as the release slate thinned, and the shares lost most of their value in those two years. Cash went into the System Era acquisition in Nov’23, $22m upfront and up to $40m in total, for the studio behind Astroneer. It also went into a heavier pipeline of own-IP games, which Devolver capitalizes on and releases over several years. The back catalog, which accounts for most of the revenue, grew by 20% in 2024 but has been shrinking in alternating years. New releases carried FY25 instead. Fifteen launches led by the roguelike BALL x PIT more than tripled front-catalog revenue and made H2’25 the strongest half of adj. EBITDA since 2022. That recovery arrived after the market had stopped paying for it. Headcount followed the same arc. The group had 210 team members around the IPO and 303 at the end of 2023, after System Era added 56. It ended 2025 with 270, after cuts at Nerial, Artificer, and Good Shepherd. The exit values Devolver at ~$287k of Enterprise Value per team member.

Devolver is the second listed games publisher to leave a European market this year. Atari (PAR: ALATA) took Sweden-based Thunderful Group to 90.2% through a $3.8m (SEK 35m) rescue share issue at SEK 0.10 a share. It then delisted Thunderful from Nasdaq First North on Feb 24, 2026, and began a compulsory buyout of the minority. Devolver joins a wider exit: the number of companies listed in London fell from 2,429 in 2015 to 1,534 in May 2026.

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Notable Transactions

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

South Korea-based games developer Align Studio, a newly formed studio backed by Kakao Games (KOSDAQ: 293490), is acquiring the ArcheAge IP and the ArcheAge S development business from South Korea-based XL Games for $29.2m (KRW 39.2bn). The seller is a 52.82%-owned subsidiary of Kakao Games, and the closing is set for Oct 27, 2026. The transfer covers the trademarks, copyrights, and domains of the 2013 MMORPG. It also covers the 92-person team building ArcheAge S: Strait of Freedom, a new PC MMORPG in the franchise closer to the original ArcheAge than ArcheAge Chronicles, for a 2027 launch on Steam. XL Games keeps the online action RPG ArcheAge Chronicles, which it plans to self-publish. XL Games is selling to raise liquidity and repair its balance sheet. XL Games reported H1’26 revenue of $4.8m (KRW 6.4bn), down 48.3% YoY, and an operating loss of $15.1m (KRW 20.3bn). Founder Jake Song, who created Lineage at NCSOFT before founding XL Games in 2003, left the studio in early 2025.

South Korea-based blockchain and mobile games company NEXUS (KOSDAQ: 205500) is acquiring an additional 800,000 shares (approximately 3.52%) of South Korea-based app marketplace One Store for an undisclosed sum from telecom operators KT (KRX: 030200) and LG Uplus (KRX: 032640). NEXUS bought 89.03% of One Store for $40.7m in Jun’26, taking its stake to about 92.5%, though press reports put the new holding at 95.88%. In a concurrent transaction, NEXUS has issued 2,151,443 new shares, 2.51% of the company, at KRW 1,765 a share. The $2.8m (KRW 3.8B) came from KT, LG Uplus, and the blockchain security firm CertiK, subject to a one-year lock-up. One Store, the Android app store built by South Korea’s mobile carriers and Naver (KRX: 035420), becomes the distribution layer for NEXUS’s onchain gaming platform CROSS, which is being rebranded as One. CertiK joins as a validator.

UK-based games developer and publisher LEGO Digital Play has acquired UK-based mobile games developer Offroad Games for an undisclosed sum. Offroad makes the car-restoration match-3 Chrome Valley Customs. It is the first acquisition by LEGO Digital Play, formed in Feb’25 under President Aaron Loeb, formerly Chief Business Officer at Scopely. Offroad was founded in 2025 after Supercell bought Space Ape Games outright in Nov’24. CEO Geoffrey Gilles, who ran Chrome Valley Customs at Space Ape, founded it with CTO Christopher Jubb. The 17-person team took Chrome Valley Customs, live since Jun’23, and the arcade shooter Fastlane: Road to Revenge with it. It has now joined LEGO Digital Play, where Gilles becomes Head of Studio, and Chrome Valley Customs continues under the Offroad label.

US-based social-world operator Pocket Worlds has acquired the 3D mobile social world Hotel Hideaway from Finland-based Sulake, maker of Habbo, for an undisclosed sum. Launched in 2018, Hotel Hideaway has more than 32 million registered users and around 300,000 monthly active players, built around fashion, collecting, and live community events. It joins Highrise, Pocket Worlds’ own social world, and the avatar community Everskies, bringing the combined portfolio to over 80 million registered users. Sulake, owned by the Netherlands-based ad-tech and games company Azerion (AMS: AZRN) since 2021, will continue to support Habbo and Habbo Hotel: Origins.

VENTURE FINANCING

Japan-based creator-platform operator pixiv has made a strategic investment of an undisclosed amount in US-based social VR platform VRChat, as part of a capital-and-business alliance. pixiv already supplies much of the avatar economy inside VRChat. Its free 3D avatar maker, VRoid Studio; its sharing platform, VRoid Hub; and its creator marketplace, BOOTH, are sources of many VRChat avatars. BOOTH’s 3D model category surpassed JPY 10B in transaction value in 2025. VRChat counts more than 250,000 active communities, around 100,000 average daily concurrent users, and a peak above 160,000. VRChat last raised an $80m Series D led by Anthos Capital in Jun’21.

India-based gaming hardware company ARC has raised $1.1m (INR 105m) in a pre-Seed round. Chimera VC and MIXI Global Investments, the venture arm of Japan-based MIXI (TSE: 2121), led the round. Dhruv Vohra, Director for Asia Pacific at Meta, invested personally. Founded in 2025 by Jobin Joseph and Kaustubh K. Jadhav, ARC is building the ARC X1, a handheld console built on an ARM-based architecture powered by Qualcomm technology, designed to support Android gaming, PC-game compatibility, and cloud gaming. It runs ARC’s own Android-based OwlOS, with a Proton layer for PC games. Proceeds fund hardware engineering, manufacturing readiness, and OwlOS development.

PUBLIC OFFERINGS

[CONSUMER APPS / NON-GAMING] Türkiye-based consumer apps company HubX has signed a non-binding letter of intent with UK-based SPAC Daedalus Special Acquisition (NASDAQ: DSAC). The combination would list HubX on Nasdaq. Daedalus raised $250m in its Dec’25 IPO and set out consumer AI as its target sector. Its co-CEOs are Akin Babayigit, co-founder of Tripledot Studios and an investor in Peak Games, Dream Games, and Gram Games. The other co-CEO, Orkun Kilic, was Managing Partner of Paulson Europe, the London arm of John Paulson’s hedge fund Paulson & Co. that ran the Paulson European Opportunities Fund, until 2019. HubX was founded in 2022 by Cem and Kaan Ortabaş and runs more than 40 AI-native apps with 600 million downloads. On Aug 31, it took up to $75m from Point72 Private Investments ($50m initial investment and an option for the additional $25m investment) at a $1.2B pre-money valuation, its first outside capital.

UA FINANCING

Singapore-based UA financing platform PvX Partners has agreed to two user-acquisition financing deals with app developers in Vietnam within two weeks of each other. Vietnam-based mobile casual games developer Skylink Studio has secured up to $12m in non-dilutive growth financing. The funds back its “Classic Games” tile-matching lineup, led by Tile Pyramid and Tile Bloom, with Tile Pyramid at over 500K installs on Google Play. It also funds new genres such as jigsaw puzzles. Vietnam-based consumer apps company Tevo has secured $10m from PvX Partners on Sep 8, 2026. Tevo previously took an undisclosed Seed round from EZTech and UX Foundation in Sep’25.

EARNINGS REPORTS

(1) Close-to-close move from the last close before the release to the release-day close, both companies reporting before the open. Source: company releases and exchange closes.

Frontier Developments reported record profit for the year to May 31, 2026: adj. operating profit of $28.9m (GBP 21.4m), up 62%, on revenue of $141m (GBP 104.8m), up 16%, with the creative-management simulations Jurassic World Evolution 3, Planet Coaster 2 and Planet Zoo at 89% of revenue against 77% a year earlier. Cash closed the year at $59.4m (GBP 44.0m) after $20.9m (GBP 15.5m) of buybacks and $2.7m (GBP 2.0m) of employee-trust share purchases, and the board declared a $6.8m (GBP 5.0m) special dividend of 14.1 pence a share. Shore Capital upgraded the shares to Buy with a GBX 650 target on the results, and Berenberg kept Buy at GBX 600. Founder David Braben moves from Executive to Non-Executive Director and remains President.

Gamehaus reported Q4’FY26 revenue of $24.3m, down 20.8% YoY after it cut user-acquisition spend across its casual mobile portfolio, with net income of $0.9m and FY26 revenue of $104.7m, down 11.4%. It guided Q1’FY27 revenue to $20m-$23m and will shift resources from the mobile portfolio to AI-generated content starting in FY27.

Public Market Performance

It was a negative week for the tracked universe: 26 rose, 35 fell, and 1 was flat, with a median move of (0.7%), over the Friday, Sep 4, to Friday, Sep 11 window.

Share Price Signals

Everplay Group (AIM: EVPL) (+30.26%) rose after its tactical shooter Wardogs, developed by Bulkhead and published under the Team17 label, sold more than one million copies on its first day in Steam Early Access on Sep 10. Shore Capital kept its Buy and GBX 430 target, reading the launch as proof of the group’s content and partnership model, and Consensus points to FY26 revenue of GBP 175.3m and adj. EBITDA of GBP 50.7m, against GBP 48.5m in FY25. Half-year results follow on Sep 15.

Frontier Developments (AIM: FDEV) (+15.01%) rose on its FY26 results on Sep 9: revenue up 16% to GBP 104.8m and a record adj. operating profit of GBP 21.4m, up 62%, with creative-management simulations now 89% of revenue, plus a 14.1 pence special dividend. Shore Capital upgraded the shares to Buy with a GBX 650 target on the results, and Berenberg reiterated Buy with a GBX 600 target. The week also carried the Sep 3 announcement of a self-funded game on Disney IP, which the results call did not price separately.

Nintendo (OTC: NTDOY) (-6.04%) fell after two Direct presentations on Sep 8 and Sep 9, the Zelda 40th anniversary show and the winter line-up, left the Switch 2 holiday slate resting on remasters such as Pikmin 4 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, with no new 3D Mario and with Metroid Ravenous and a new 3D Kirby pushed to 2027. The one dated new release is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Switch 2 on Nov 5, 2026. The ADR fell 5.8% on Sep 9, and the Tokyo shares fell 4.9% the next session.

Earnings Calendar: The Week Ahead

Dates are as scheduled by the issuers and remain subject to change. Source: issuer financial calendars and RNS notices.

It was a negative week for the tracked universe: 38 of 64 companies fell, with a median move of -1.3%. Large Cap Diversified was the only index to decline, falling 2.3%, while the other five indices …

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InvestGame tracked 17 deals worth $1.2B this week. 10 closed. Below are the top 11.

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Matrix Partners China has led a ~$446m Series B and B+ into VAST, maker of Tripo AI, in its fourth round of 2026

China-based generative 3D AI company VAST, developer of the 3D asset generator Tripo AI, has raised ~$446m (~RMB 3B) in a Series B and Series B+ round led by Matrix Partners China, announced on Sep 1, 2026. The strategic investors are games publishers Perfect World (SZSE: 002624), 37 Interactive Entertainment (SZSE: 002555), and Yanqu Games; the marketing group BlueFocus (SZSE: 300058); the software company ThunderSoft (SZSE: 300496); and the semiconductor investor SPC. Financial investors CDH VGC, CICC Capital, CMC Capital, Hongtai Aplus, 3H Health Investment, Zhongping Capital, and GreatOrigin Asia joined, and existing backers Fortune Capital, Primavera Capital, 4399 Network, Muhua Tech Ventures, Vitalbridge Capital, INCE Capital, and T-Capital topped up. Proceeds fund 3D-native foundation models, 3D data infrastructure, training and inference compute, and commercialization.

It is VAST’s fourth round of 2026 and more than twice the size of any of the other three. The ladder runs from a $50m Series A co-led by Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) and Hengxu Capital in Mar’26, through a ~$200m Series A+ and A++ co-led by INCE Capital and China Life Yangtze River Delta Sci-Tech Fund in Jun’26, which Bloomberg reported at a valuation of at least $1.0B, to a $150m Series A3 in Jul’26 from Geely Capital, 4399, Tanwan (SEHK: 9890), Giant Network (SZSE: 002558) and Fosun Capital. Its total in less than six months, as 36kr reports, is ~RMB 5B (~$744m), which the company calls a record for AI 3D. The four rounds put VAST first among AI-native companies in gaming and entertainment, at ~$846m of disclosed funding to date, ahead of Suno AI at $775m and PixVerse at $554m.

The investors in this round are increasingly the same games companies that use its tools. The Mar’26 round was backed by internet groups: Alibaba co-led it, and Baidu Ventures joined. Jul’26 brought the first three games companies, 4399, Tanwan and Giant Network. This round adds Perfect World, 37 Interactive, and Yanqu, and 4399 returns for a second check. The enterprise API base stood at 700+ customers and 35,000 active developers, with the creator base at 3 million in Aug’25, and reached 6.5 million by Dec’25. VAST’s Series A release counted 6.5 million creators, 90,000 developers and ~100 million generated assets by Mar’26, and Forbes put users at 20 million by Jun’26, mostly in the US, Europe and Japan, paying $20 to $90 a month (billed annually) on the consumer side and per-project fees on the enterprise side.

Studios use Tripo to turn a text prompt or a concept image into a finished 3D object or character that can be dropped into a game engine as a prop, character, or environment asset. NetEase (NASDAQ: NTES) runs it in two live games, Eggy Party and Where Winds Meet, and Tencent (SEHK: 700), ByteDance, and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) use it in internal workflows via the enterprise API. The new P2.0 model, announced with the round, produces assets in the mesh format studios’ animation tools expect, so less manual clean-up is needed before an asset is usable.

VAST has disclosed neither a post-money valuation for this round nor revenue. The WSJ reported in August that VAST sought the round at nearly $2.0B. The priced comparable is Meshy, which raised nearly $400m at a $1.5B valuation in Jul’26, co-led by IDG Capital, Matrix Partners China and Monolith Management, on ~$60m in ARR and 12 million registered users. Matrix Partners China has therefore led the two largest rounds in AI 3D, six weeks apart, on both sides of the rivalry.

Bloomberg reported on Aug 4 that VAST is weighing a Hong Kong IPO with Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and CICC (SEHK: 3908) at a preliminary stage, and the WSJ said the listing could occur as soon as 2027. CICC Capital, the bank’s private-equity arm, is in this round. Founder and CEO Simon Song co-founded MiniMax (SEHK: 100), which listed in Hong Kong in Jan’26, and Chief Scientist Yanpei Cao led 3D generation at Tencent’s ARC Lab before VAST. InvestGame will continue monitoring the AI 3D category and whether a Hong Kong listing prices VAST at a level above Meshy’s $1.5B.

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

US-based classic games IP holder and publisher Piko Interactive has acquired Thailand-based indie games developer and publisher 7 Raven Studios for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2006, 7 Raven has self-published on Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch since 2017, released the pixel-art Metroidvania The Skylia Prophecy in 2021, and continues as a development and publishing label under Piko. Piko, founded in 2013 by President Eli Galindo, holds over 180 video game, cartoon, toy, and comic IPs from the 1980s and 1990s. 7 Raven will build new original IP and new games on that catalog. As Galindo stated, “The next step is creating new games with it.” The two first worked together in 2015, when Piko published 7 Raven’s Game Boy Advance role-playing game Broken Circle.

UK-based game modding platform Nexus Mods, owned by Denmark-based gaming holding Chosen since Jun’25, has acquired SteamDB, the donation-funded third-party database of the Steam catalog, for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2013 by Pavel Djundik and Martin Benjamins, SteamDB tracks the builds, depots, and update history of every Steam game, along with player counts and price history. Nexus Mods, which counts 78 million members and 25 billion downloads, will use that version-level data to let its mod manager flag mods built for a different game build and to pin exact game versions in Collections. Djundik stays on through a transition over the coming months. SteamDB commits to staying free, keeping all current features outside a paywall, and running no display ads, with revenue coming from publisher partnerships, integrations, and affiliate links.

UK-based sports movement-intelligence platform Hitai has acquired the technology and intellectual property of UK-based fitness gaming developer Quell for an undisclosed sum. The assets comprise Quell’s camera-less motion-recognition models, the firmware and hardware stack of its Impact fitness console, and its launch title Shardfall, a fantasy combat action RPG built around 20-minute HIIT sessions. Quell, founded in 2020, raised $15.6m in total, including a $10m Series A led by Tencent (SEHK: 700) in Feb’23. Quell entered a company voluntary arrangement in Oct’25 and remains registered as active.

China-based games publisher 4399 has taken a 22% stake in newly founded Guangzhou-based studio Zhuwei Network for an undisclosed sum. Founder Chen Ge was the founding lead designer of NetEase’s (NASDAQ: NTES) mobile strategy title Infinite Borders, and Zhuwei is building an open-world strategy game. Chen’s earlier venture took financing from South Korea-based publisher Nexus (KOSDAQ: 205500). For 4399, which joined VAST’s rounds in July and this week, it is a rare game-development bet after a year of AI-focused investments.

VENTURE FINANCING

[CONSUMER APPS / NON-GAMING] Türkiye-based consumer apps company HubX has raised $50m from Point72 Private Investments at a $1.2B pre-money valuation, with an option for a further $25m, in its first external financing. Founded in 2022 in Izmir, HubX operates more than 40 AI-native consumer apps with over 600 million downloads. Proceeds fund an acquisition engine for consumer-app teams. HubX follows games companies Peak Games, sold to Zynga for $1.8B in 2020, and Dream Games, a unicorn since 2021, into Türkiye’s unicorn line.

US-based fintech company CreatorFi has raised $45m in combined debt and equity financing, with capacity for a further $100m. EV3 led the equity round and VerisFi Capital the debt round, with participation from Uncorrelated Ventures and Protagonist. CreatorFi advances capital against recurring platform revenue, from game earnings to music royalties, repaid as a share of platform payouts. For games studios, it offers debt facilities of $200k to $20m+ with no equity taken: user acquisition financing underwritten on a studio’s whole portfolio revenue rather than the funded cohort, minimum-guarantee financing against licensing revenue, and growth capital for multi-title studios, on Roblox (NYSE: RBLX), Fortnite, Minecraft, mobile, PC & Consoles. Launched in Jul’25 by co-founders Billy Huang, CEO, and Jack Cameron out of Insomnia Labs, CreatorFi previously secured a $12m credit facility from Kamui Finance and others.

South Korea-based games publisher Kakao Games (KOSDAQ: 293490) has made a strategic investment of an undisclosed size in BackendX, a Seoul-based platform whose ~50 AI agents turn natural-language requirements into a deployed backend. Founded in 2025 by CEO Moon Dae-kyung, formerly CEO of game-server engine developer iFun Factory, BackendX is pre-launch. Kakao Games plans to offer the tool to studios under its publishing contracts. Nexus (KOSDAQ: 205500) invested in Sep’25, making Kakao Games the second strategic backer.

Israel-based consumer technology company Particula, maker of app-connected toys, has raised $15m in a growth round led by Elah Fund, with existing investors Grove Ventures and Flashpoint returning. Proceeds go to product development, hiring, and international expansion. Founded in 2017 by CEO Udi Dor, Particula has sold more than 1 million units across four lines: the app-connected Rubik’s Cube GoCube, the robotic chess board GoChess, the app-connected dice GoDice, and the balance board GoBalance, and has moved from direct-to-consumer sales into national and specialty retail. Its Harry Potter edition, GoChess Wizard, is licensed from Warner Bros. under a partnership announced in Aug’25. Flashpoint led Particula’s $5m Series A in Feb’21, and the 2023 GoChess Kickstarter raised $2.1m.

Saudi Arabia-based mobile games developer TakaHouse has raised $1.5m from Impact46, which runs a $40m (SAR 150m) gaming fund set up with the National Development Fund and the Social Development Bank in Mar’24. Founded in 2018 in Riyadh by CEO Salman S Nasser, the studio launched the social card game WhistGame in 2021, which has more than 140,000 users, and will use the funds to develop new titles beyond it.

PUBLIC OFFERINGS

China-based video platform Bilibili (NASDAQ: BILI, SEHK: 9626) has priced $700m of zero-coupon convertible senior notes due Sep 15, 2031, of which $200m was subscribed by Tencent (SEHK: 700). Alongside the notes, Bilibili authorized a $300m buyback: a $100m delta buyback of shares sold in the concurrent hedging placement, and $200m to repurchase Tencent’s own Class Z shares so its stake does not rise, subject to shareholder approval at an upcoming general meeting. Proceeds fund AI-driven product investment in content recommendation and creation tools, plus general corporate purposes. Mobile games brought in $205.1m, 18% of second-quarter revenue, the only segment to decline.

UA FINANCING

US-based mobile games developer Burlingame Studios has secured $12m in non-dilutive UA financing from Singapore-based PvX Partners, announced Sep 3, 2026, alongside the rebrand of its flagship title to the design-and-decor simulation Flourish by Garden Joy. Since its launch in Mar’23, the game has generated $22.7m in lifetime in-app purchase revenue from 4.3 million downloads, according to AppMagic. Founded by CEO Chris McGill, previously SVP and General Manager at Glu Mobile, with four colleagues from CrowdStar and Glu Mobile, the studio took a $20m investment from Scopely in Mar’22, when it was newly formed.

FUNDRAISING

Saudi Arabia-based development finance institution National Development Fund has approved, per an Aug 24 update, more than $112m (SAR 421m) of financing through its Gaming and Esports Financing Program since its Sep’22 launch, reaching 82 companies and more than 127 games as of the end of 2025. The program runs through the Social Development Bank, which lends up to $12m (SAR 45m) per company for working capital and capex. Equity comes through two SDB-anchored venture funds signed in Mar’24: the $80m (SAR 300m) Merak Capital gaming fund and the $40m (SAR 150m) Impact46 fund.

The Dubai Films and Games Commission has announced a game-studio accelerator with US-based video game commerce platform Xsolla, launching in Oct’26 and extending their May’26 partnership. Dubai also becomes the second permanent Xsolla Club after Tel Aviv. Games Commissioner Faisal Kazim targets studios that can ship a game but have yet to close deals with larger publishers and investors.

EARNINGS REPORTS

(1) Close-to-close move around the report date. Due dates are set by the issuer and may change. Source: company releases and exchange closes.

CD Projekt beat expectations on both lines in Q2: revenue of $65m came in 22% above consensus, and net profit of $38m came in 44% above, on licensing income that rose about tenfold year on year to $25m in the first half. The shares moved only 0.6% because the growth came from the back catalog and licensing rather than a new release: the company reports that The Witcher 3 has passed 65m copies and the series 90m, while Cyberpunk 2077 has passed 40m with Phantom Liberty at 15m. The pipeline is now one Witcher release a year: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered on Sep 29, the Songs of the Past expansion in 2027, and The Witcher 4 in 2028.

Public Market Performance

It was a negative week for the tracked universe: of 64 eligible companies, 25 rose, 38 fell, and 1 was flat, with a median move of -1.3%, over the Friday, Aug 28 to Friday, Sep 4 window.

Share Price Signals

Roblox (NYSE: RBLX) (+12.41%) rose in two trading sessions. On Aug 31, the European Commission designated Roblox as a Very Large Online Platform under the Digital Services Act, noting that it has at least 45 million average monthly users in the bloc, with compliance due by Jan’27. Then, after the close on Sep 3, Roblox published its 2025 Economic Impact Reports: creators earned over $1.5B in 2025, up from $923m in 2024, and US creators generated $752m in GDP impact, up 69% from 2024.

Devolver Digital (LSE: DEVO) (+11.40%) climbed into the deadline for its own tender offer. The indie publisher is canceling its AIM admission and will buy back about 4.71% of its issued capital at 16 pence a share, returning up to $5.0m in cash. Elections had to be in by 4.00 p.m. on Sep 3, with the shareholder vote and the tender close both set for Sep 8 and dealings ending Sep 15. Shares went from 7.75p on Sep 1 to 8.50p on Sep 3, still well under the 16 pence tender price. The directors and their concert party, on 31.45% of the capital, have undertaken not to tender.

iDreamSky Technology (SEHK: 1119) (+10.34%) resumed its climb this week, extending a rally that began before the Hong Kong-listed mobile games publisher released H1 2026 results on Aug 27. Revenue rose 4.7% to RMB 718.3m from RMB 685.8m, but profit attributable to equity holders fell 23.5% to RMB 21.8m and basic EPS dropped 40.6% to RMB 0.01, a mixed print that nonetheless kept buyers in the stock. Shares dipped to HK$0.435 on Aug 28, the day after the results, then recovered to HK$0.52 by Sep 3 and closed the week at HK$0.48. The stock had already risen 61.1% in the month before the results, and Simply Wall St flagged the thinning profitability behind that run.

Frontier Developments (LSE: FDEV) (+6.41%) rose after the Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo studio announced on Sep 3 a new game built on Disney’s intellectual property, fully funded by Frontier itself. The companies disclosed no financial terms. CEO Jo Cooke called it a fit with Frontier’s creative-management-simulation strategy, the genre behind Planet Coaster, Planet Zoo, and Jurassic World Evolution. Coverage across the games press read it as a likely theme-park management sim, given the studio’s back catalog.

Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ: TTWO) (-8.79%) extended its slide as the Grand Theft Auto VI leak fallout continued. Shares have fallen more than 19% from their early-July high near $266, placing them firmly in correction territory, and closed the week at $214.69. Take-Two’s legal pursuit of the leaker escalated on Sep 1, when a New York federal court granted a new, narrower subpoena naming specific individuals, after the company had already withdrawn its original YouTube request under a judge’s pushback. Rockstar called the breach heartbreaking. Bank of America analysts said the leaked footage was impressive but unlikely to move their estimates. The leak has not dented anticipation for the Nov 19 launch: Rockstar’s official 27-minute preview drew 31.1 million Netflix views in four days.

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It was a positive week for the tracked universe: 35 of 63 companies rose, with a median move of +0.2%. Mid Cap Mobile was the only index to decline, falling 1.9%, while Verve Group posted the week’s largest company decline after earnings. AdTech is down 45.0% year-to-date, the widest of the six indices.

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Tencent has led an $18m Series B into W4 Games, founded by the creators of the open-source Godot Engine

Ireland-based game engine developer W4 Games has raised $18.0m in a Series B led by Tencent (SEHK: 700), with existing backers OSS Capital, Lux Capital, Naval Ravikant and Tobias Lütke’s family office. Announced on Aug 25, 2026, it includes a multi-year strategic partnership with Tencent to scale W4’s business and the Godot ecosystem in Asia, covering go-to-market, localization, ecosystem support, advocacy, and market development among developers in the region. Proceeds would also fund a 50% increase in W4’s international team, about 30 people today across around 20 cities, with 10 to 15 full-time hires planned over the next 12 months.

W4 puts total funding raised to date at $33m, comprising its $15.0m Series A in Dec’23 plus this round. Its $8.5m Seed of Sep’22, which W4 announced earlier, is not in that figure, and including it brings the all-in total to $41.5m.

W4 was founded in 2021 in Dublin by Godot creator Juan Linietsky, project manager Rémi Verschelde, Fabio Alessandrelli, and Nicola Farronato, with Linietsky and Farronato as co-CEOs. Today, the company sells W4 Consoles, approved porting middleware for Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, alongside engine consulting, XR integration and enterprise support. Godot itself is a free, MIT-licensed game engine operated by the Godot Foundation, a Dutch non-profit organization.

Godot’s adoption is what the round is underwriting, and it compounds. Titles shipped on Steam roughly quadrupled between 2023 and 2025, and 2026 matched the whole of 2025 in the first eight months. At GMTK Game Jam 2026 in Jul’26, Godot took 47% of roughly 10,500 entries against Unity’s 34%, the first time in ten runs that Unity was not the most-used engine there. According to Gamalytic data, the number of Godot games with more than $1m in annual sales has increased from 2 to more than 50 over three years. Some well-known games built on the Godot engine include:

• Slay the Spire 2, sequel to one of the genre’s defining deckbuilders, entered Steam Early Access on Godot in Mar’26 and peaked at ~575k concurrent players, the 20th-highest all-time Steam peak;

• According to Alinea Analytics, Buckshot Roulette, also built in Godot, has sold more than 10 million copies across PC and Xbox since its Dec’23 debut.

One of its competitors, US-based Unity Software, reported Q2’26 Strategic Create revenue (the Create Solutions segment, covering Unity Editor licenses, developer subscriptions, and related engine tools) of $157.5m, up 5% YoY as reported, or 14% excluding a $12m one-off item in the Q2’25 base, the engine line Godot competes with. Godot’s Steam ramp begins the year after Unity’s Sep’23 runtime-fee pricing change, which cost Unity 19% of its value in ten days and was later canceled outright.

Farronato told GamesBeat that the China opportunity exists “in part because Unity decided to pull out,” and told GamesIndustry.biz that W4 chose Tencent for its Asian ecosystem rather than the size of the offer: “It’s not only about the money. It’s about being really willing to develop strategic activities together.” Unity 6 has been unavailable in China since Apr’25. Chinese developers get a separate local build instead, through the joint venture Unity formed there in 2022, and Bloomberg reported in Feb’26 that Unity was weighing a sale of that China business at more than $1B. China and Japan are Godot’s second-largest markets by active users after the United States. Tencent also owns a stake in Epic Games, the maker of the rival Unreal Engine: about 40%, bought for $330m in 2012. Farronato’s only on-record answer is that Tencent is a minority investor and does not control it.

Another relevant deal in the game engine segment is SUD’s $72m purchase of Cocos Technologies, the developer of Cocos Creator, in Nov’25. InvestGame will continue to monitor deal activity in the game engine market.

Notable Transactions

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Germany-based games developer SOFTGAMES has announced the acquisition of the full instant games portfolio of Denmark-based multiplatform games developer and publisher Funday Games, 19 titles across puzzle, creative, arcade, and trivia, for an undisclosed sum. Funday Games continues to operate independently, with a focus on PC development and publishing. One of its titles, the survivor-like Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, has passed 2 million players since its 2024 launch. Third-party tracker InstantIntel lists one active Funday title on Facebook Instant Games, the social chess game Chess Quest, at 1.6 million MAU as of Aug 2026, ahead of Bubble Shooter Pro with 1.2 million MAU - SOFTGAMES’ top-performing title among its 29 active Facebook Instant Games. Meta will retire Facebook Web Games on Sep 30, 2026, and requires all remaining titles to migrate to Instant Games. SOFTGAMES sold its own web games business, around 300 titles, to Azerion (AMS: AZRN) in Aug’21.

US-based esports organization M80 has acquired the operating rights to the Boston Breach team’s spot in the Call of Duty League for an undisclosed sum and will compete as M80 Boston. USPTO records still list Oxygen CDL, the seller and a US-based esports operator, as the owner of the Boston Breach trademarks, with no assignment recorded at the time of reporting.

VENTURE FINANCING

UK-based tech company Stability AI, developer of the Stable Diffusion image models, has raised $76m in a Series B round from new investors Electronic Arts, Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group (AMS: UMG), Warner Music Group (NASDAQ: WMG), AMD Ventures and Pacific Alliance Ventures, with returning backers Coatue, Greycroft, Kadmos Capital, Sean Parker and Eric Schmidt. Stability has raised $232m in total funding since Prem Akkaraju became CEO in Jun’24. The round follows an Oct’25 partnership that embeds a Stability 3D research team with EA’s artists, working on physically based rendering materials and prompt-driven 3D environment pre-visualization. EA confirmed its investment in Jan’26. The raise comes amid a broader wave of large rounds for creative-AI vendors: Black Forest Labs closed a $300m Series B at a $3.25B valuation in Dec’25, and Runway raised $315m at a reported $5.3B in Feb’26.

According to the SEC, US-based games publisher Delphi Interactive has raised $27.1m from 13 accredited investors, as disclosed in a Form D filed on Aug 20, 2026. The offering was sold entirely in simple agreements for future equity, with a $25k minimum, no placement agent, and no disclosed investor. Michael Eisner and Moritz Baier-Lentz stated in May’26 that they were co-leading Delphi’s Series A and joining as advisors, though it’s unclear whether their round refers to this SAFE filing or an earlier close. Delphi secured the license behind the action-adventure 007 First Light, which IO Interactive developed and published and which has sold more than 4 million copies. Delphi published the football game FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition on Netflix in June 2026. Its developer, part-owned Refactor Games, cut 85% of its staff, around 80 people, on Jul 31, 2026, after Delphi reportedly pulled its funding. Refactor founder Nathan Burba confirmed to GamesBeat that the cuts stopped just short of a full closure, even as Netflix called the critically panned title a “top-tier” performer for the platform.

Ireland-based browser gaming platform Entity has raised $5.8m (EUR 5.0m) in a Seed round backed by ACT Venture Capital, Delta Partners and Elkstone, with support from Enterprise Ireland and games industry angels. Founded in 2024, Entity is building a platform that runs console-quality games inside the browser on WebGPU and WebAssembly, playable from a single link with no download, and is due to launch in 2027. Three of its five founders, including CEO Rich Barnwell, previously founded Digit Game Studios, the Dublin studio behind Star Trek Fleet Command, which Scopely acquired in 2019. Both ACT and Delta backed Digit in its Seed round.

FUNDRAISING

US-based talent agency Creative Artists Agency has launched Frame1Games, a year-long funding and accelerator program for independent developers. CAA commits to a “multi-million-dollar capital investment,” without disclosing how it’s allocated across selected teams. Frame1Games will back several projects a year, show cohort titles in a curated marketplace and, from 2027, market them at Summer Game Fest and The Game Awards. Indie Fund investment partner Jared Yeager leads it, under CAA head of games Derek Douglas. CAA, majority-owned by the Pinault family’s Artémis since 2023, represents Respawn, Obsidian, Turtle Rock Studios and Strange Scaffold.

FIXED INCOME

US-based mobile attribution and marketing analytics company AppsFlyer has secured a $400m credit line from Israel-based Bank Leumi (TASE: LUMI), Calcalist reported on Aug 23. Neither AppsFlyer nor Bank Leumi has confirmed it. The stated purpose is financial flexibility to support ongoing operations. The line follows June’s transaction, in which Moloco, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Meta (NASDAQ: META) and Unity (NYSE: U) each took a minority, non-controlling stake, reported at more than $1.0B Series E investment on a $2.7B post-money valuation and primarily secondary, giving liquidity to long-standing holders. AppsFlyer runs ~$500m in ARR, with growth of 9%-15% a year, a slowdown Calcalist cited as the reason for a shelved $4.0B-$5.0B IPO.

EARNINGS REPORTS

(1) Close-to-close move straddling the report date, recomputed from exchange closes. Azerion published before its own market opened, so the reaction is to the report itself. 37 Interactive Entertainment, 11 bit studios, Ten Square Games, CMGE Technology Group, and iDreamSky Technology published after the close, so the baseline is the release-day close, and the reaction is the next close.

Source: company releases and exchange closing prices.

Public Market Performance

• Sega Sammy Holdings (+11.45%) posted a price increase on Aug 25, when J.P. Morgan Securities Japan raised its price target to JPY 3,500 from JPY 2,600, maintaining an Overweight rating and reversing its own Jun 23 cut to JPY 3,400. It was catching up with the Aug 7 first quarter, where the group beat its own operating plan by more than $44m (JPY 7B), split roughly evenly between its games business and its pachinko and pachislot machines.
  

• Everplay Group (+10.10%) rose during gamescom week, with no RNS filings in the window. Its Team17 label revealed Worms: Galactic Tactics at Opening Night Live on Aug 25 and unveiled Bossa Games’ multiplatform What Goes Up on Aug 27. Neither is a regulatory disclosure, so the move reads as gamescom-week sentiment rather than a single-priced event.
  

• Funko (+9.23%) jumped 5.8% on Aug 24 after Seaport Global initiated coverage at Buy with an $8 price target, citing rapid growth in the collector market and Funko’s international expansion of Pop! collectibles. Shares closed the day at $6.88, a new 52-week high, extending the rally from the Aug 6 second-quarter beat that swung the company to an adjusted profit and lifted full-year EBITDA guidance to $100m-$110m.
  

• Remedy Entertainment (+8.16%) climbed in each of the three sessions from Aug 25, a cumulative 7.5%, on its gamescom showing for CONTROL Resonant. The “Altered State” trailer premiered at Opening Night Live on Aug 25, and the game’s first public playable build followed on the show floor the next day. It launches on Sep 24, carrying more than 1.5 million wishlists. The heavier move this month was driven by the Aug 11 half-year report, which lifted the stock 9.3%: H1 revenue fell 23.1% to $27.1m (EUR 23.3m), but the outlook for higher full-year revenue and EBITDA held. Sole covering broker Inderes has had a Buy at EUR 21.00 since Aug 12.
  

• Kadokawa (+6.32%) rose after a Nikkei analysis on Aug 26 used a sum-of-the-parts model to argue the market is pricing in roughly JPY 200B of intellectual-property value beyond the company’s underlying businesses, even as full-year net profit fell 83% to JPY 1.2B. The piece ties the premium to Kadokawa’s capital and business alliance with Sony Group, which became its largest shareholder in a JPY 50B stake deal.
  

• Enad Global 7 (-18.27%) fell after Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 launched on Aug 25 to a mixed reception. EG7 has put $37.4m (SEK 356.3m) into the title over three years, its largest capitalized investment. Six days before launch, it told the market that it “has received positive early feedback ahead of launch”. The game opened at 56% positive on Steam, recovered to 63%, is still banded as Mixed, and peaked at 7,949 concurrent players, compared with 15,568 for the 2021 original. Finwire tied the fall to criticism of stuttering, crashes, and weak AI.
  

• Azerion (-10.48%) fell on Q2 and H1 results published pre-market on Aug 27, which cut full-year revenue guidance from around 10% growth to flat against 2025 while holding the medium-term adj. EBITDA margin target of 14% to 16%. Q2 revenue fell 5.9% to $148.3m (EUR 127.7m), and Advertising Platform revenue fell 8.7% to $119.5m (EUR 102.9m), yet that division’s EBITDA rose 20.5% to a record on cost cuts taken earlier, and group H1 operating loss narrowed 65.5%. Management attributed the pressure to cautious advertisers, a product-mix shift, and publishers’ loss of traffic in the AI era.
  

• CD Projekt (-8.58%) fell after joint CEO Michal Nowakowski said on the evening of Aug 24 that The Witcher 4 is targeting 2028, the first window the company has ever named. That pushes its largest revenue event out a year while costs keep accruing on the 513 of 975 developers assigned to the title. The sell side was already at 2028, so this is investors repricing a 2027 hope. Noble Securities said the slip puts the 2024-27 incentive targets out of reach and puts production plus marketing costs near $778m, which are expected to rise. H1 results follow on Sep 2.
  

• Unity Software (-7.71%) gave back some of its post-earnings run, with no company news this week. What moved was the sector: a tech sell-off on Aug 24 and hotter US inflation on Aug 26 pushed AI-disruption fear into enterprise software. Intuit, which had issued weak FY’27 guidance the evening before, dropped as much as 12% in premarket trading on Aug 26 before closing down 3.2% for the session. At $43.31, Unity’s stock is still 22.1% above its close before the Aug 6 second-quarter report, which beat on revenue and raised guidance.

Earnings Calendar: The Week Ahead

(1) Dates are issuer-set and subject to change.

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From Our Friends

Our friends at Aream & Co. sit down with Deconstructor of Fun to tell the firm’s story: since 2019, co-founder Affan Butt and his team have advised on more than 110 gaming transactions worth $40B, including more than half of all $100m-plus sell-side deals in games over the past five years. Advisory is a long-term partnership in which most of the work happens well before a deal starts.

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Alibaba is divesting Lingxi Games to Trustar Capital in a deal valued at more than $1.5B

China-based tech company Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) is divesting its full stake in China-based mobile games developer Lingxi Games to Hong Kong-based private equity firm Trustar Capital, according to an internal staff memo from Lingxi CEO Zhou Bingshu dated Aug 17, 2026 (independently reviewed by Reuters). The memo states plainly that Alibaba will transfer its entire Lingxi stake to Trustar, a 100% transfer, and Trustar confirmed the deal the same day.

Four outlets report two figures. Bloomberg, which first reported the deal on Aug 14, put the price above $1.5B, a figure the Wall Street Journal matched three days later, when it confirmed the memo. Reuters, citing a separate source on the same day as the memo, reported that Alibaba stood to collect more than $2B from the sale, a figure for proceeds, not a stated valuation. Chinese trade press, citing the 21st Century Business Herald, put the price at above $1.5B (RMB 10.1B), a figure widely echoed across Chinese outlets. The memo itself disclosed no value, closing date, or regulatory conditions.

36Kr estimates Lingxi’s annual revenue at $445-594m (RMB 3-4B), extrapolated from Sensor Tower product data rather than reported accounts. Against the reported price of more than $1.5B, the resulting 2.5x-3.4x should be read as an upper bound on the multiple, not a clean EV/Revenue comp.

When the sale process opened in Jun’26, Alibaba approached five potential buyers, including 37 Interactive Entertainment (SZSE: 002555), China Ruyi (HKEX: 0136), Century Huatong (SZSE: 002602) and Giant Network (SZSE: 002558), with a bundled ask of ~$1.0-1.3B (RMB 7-9B) for the whole Lingxi portfolio. National Business Daily reports directly that “the final valuation was pushed from the initial market expectation of RMB 7-9B up to the RMB-10B-plus level”.

Lingxi Games is a Guangzhou studio Alibaba built over a decade, from its 2014 acquisition of UCWeb through its 2017 acquisition of Guangzhou Jianyue. Five internal studios and the 9game and Jiaoyimao platforms employ roughly 1,200 staff. Its flagship title, the strategy game Three Kingdoms Tactics, developed under a Koei Tecmo (TYO: 3635) license and live since 2019, has surpassed 100 million registered users.

The studio’s trajectory has shifted toward a maturing live-ops business rather than a growth studio. Sensor Tower’s tracked LTM revenue (Aug’25-Jul’26) skews heavily toward licensed IP, which is roughly 85% of the portfolio. Koei Tecmo’s five titles alone account for ~71%, led by Three Kingdoms Tactics and Nobunaga’s Ambition: Shinsen. IMC Games’ Tree of Savior: Neverland makes up most of the remaining ~14%. Sensor Tower misses China’s third-party Android stores, so its mainland China figure is iOS-only and understates true billings there by 2-2.5x.

A 2023 reorganization folded Lingxi into Alibaba Digital Media and Entertainment Group. Zhan Zhonghui stepped down as CEO in Mar’24, replaced by Zhou Bingshu, and two more core producers left over the first half of 2026, as the sale process opened.

Trustar Capital is the private equity arm of Hong Kong-based CITIC Capital Holdings, rebranded from CITIC Capital Partners. Trustar manages $10.5B of committed capital and has run a control-buyout strategy across China, Japan, the US, and Europe since 2002. CITIC has backed game companies before, Supercell among them, but Lingxi is its first disclosed control position in the sector.

For Alibaba, Lingxi is the third non-core divestiture in under two years. The group sold almost all of Intime’s department-store business in Dec’24 for ~$1.0B (RMB7.4B), recording an expected ~$1.3B (RMB 9.3B) loss on the deal, and sold its controlling stake in Sun Art Retail (HKEX: 6808) in Jan’25 for ~$1.5-1.7B (HKD 11.6-13.1B). Reuters frames the pattern as capital being redirected toward AI and cloud, with Alibaba targeting more than $100B in annual cloud and AI revenue from external customers within five years. Alibaba shares rose 0.7% on the day the memo circulated, and a $1.5B Lingxi price tag is under 1% of the group’s market value.

The closest precedent is the same story from five months earlier. ByteDance, another Chinese platform giant that leveraged a massive owned audience to buy its way into games, cut back its Nuverse studio in late 2023. In Mar’26, it sold Shanghai Moonton Technology, developer of the multiplayer battle arena game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, to Saudi-backed Savvy Games Group for $6B.

NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Sweden-based gaming holding Enad Global 7 (STO: EG7) has closed its acquisition of the Aliens: Fireteam Elite back catalog and the publishing and development assets for Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2, the sequel launching Aug 25, from US-based PC & Console games developer Cold Iron Studios, for $3m. The deal was first announced on Apr 8, 2026, as an acquisition of Cold Iron Studios itself. The transaction that closed was structured as an asset purchase by EG7 subsidiary Daybreak Game Company, taking Cold Iron’s staff, the Alien franchise license and the related development assets, while some assets remain with Cold Iron under an amended publishing agreement. The deal was covered in Weekly Digest #15.

US-based game development platform Agis is acquiring UK-based games developer Maze Theory for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced alongside the Gamescom 2026 debut of The Platform, Agis’s cross-device creation and play application. Maze Theory will keep its own brand, team and development slate while gaining access to The Platform’s pipeline infrastructure. Maze Theory CEO Phil White called the deal “a rocket engine” for the studio’s creative vision, with the mixed-reality title Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars set for a Gamescom preview and pre-orders opening Aug 27, 2026.

VENTURE FINANCING

France-based cloud video-game streaming platform Blacknut has raised up to $215m from Digital Alpha Advisors, a US digital-infrastructure investment firm that becomes a strategic shareholder in Blacknut. Proceeds will fund product development, catalog expansion, cloud infrastructure, and international growth. Founded in 2016 by CEO Olivier Avaro, Blacknut distributes a catalog of 1,000+ titles through 150+ licensing partnerships to telecom operators, ISPs, device makers, automakers and OTT platforms, reaching more than 3 million subscribers across 65+ countries.

Digital Alpha, founded in 2017 by Rick Shrotri after a decade running the internal Global Infrastructure Funds team at Cisco, closed its second fund at a $1B hard cap in 2021 and maintains a standing strategic collaboration agreement with Cisco. As Shrotri stated, “We see cloud gaming emerging as one of the most durable sources of demand for GPU capacity and edge networks.” The round follows Square Enix (TSE: 9684)’s undisclosed 2022 investment in Blacknut and a broader run of infrastructure capital into cloud gaming.

Canada-based children’s social gaming studio Magic Potion Games has raised an undisclosed sum in a Series A round from Square Enix, 1AM Gaming, 1Up Ventures, and Konvoy Ventures. The round follows the COPPA-compliant virtual world Imagine Island, which exited beta after attracting more than 1 million players through organic growth, without paid marketing. 1AM Gaming’s Gregory Milken and Konvoy Ventures’ Josh Chapman are joining the studio’s board as part of the round.

Australia-based games publishing and investment agency GYLD has raised $1m in an oversubscribed Seed round led by Kameha Ventures, with participation from angel investors affiliated with mod.io, indie.bi, and ICO Partners. Proceeds will fund continued development of Critical Compass, GYLD’s proprietary research platform in development since 2020, which classifies PC games by “Archetypes” rather than traditional genres.

US-based indie games developer Terrible Toybox, co-founded by Ron Gilbert, has secured funding from an unnamed private investor for Thimbleweed Park 2, the point-and-click adventure sequel to its 2017 game Thimbleweed Park.

US-based PC & Console games developer Black Pony Immersive has secured milestone-based funding from an undisclosed game publisher. Founded in 2025 by CEO Harvey Smith and COO Ben Horne, both Arkane Austin veterans, the Austin, TX-based studio publicly unveiled itself in Aug’26, a year after quietly opening. Smith was creative director on the immersive sim Dishonored 2, and Horne was production director on the co-op shooter Redfall. The 26-person studio is developing an unannounced, narrative-rich, single-player first-person action RPG.

UK-based indie games developer Pretty Cool Games has secured an undisclosed investment from Coreblazer, the investment arm of China-based games developer Hypergryph, marking Coreblazer’s first European deal. The studio was founded in 2024 by CEO Sitara Shefta and CCO Will Dudley, former developers of the physics-based co-op puzzle game Human: Fall Flat. The fully remote team of four plans to grow to 10 as it develops its debut title and seeks a publishing partner.

US-based games developer FarBridge has secured an undisclosed strategic investment from Enduring Games, a fellow Austin, TX-based co-development studio, to fund the final phases of development on Job Simulator: Human Relations. The non-VR spin-off of Owlchemy Labs’ VR original is built by FarBridge in partnership with Owlchemy. FarBridge canceled the game’s live Kickstarter upon announcing the deal and is refunding all backers, inviting them to community playtests instead. Enduring Games CEO Adam Creighton had backed the campaign himself before offering to fund the game outright.

UA FINANCING

Sweden-based mobile casual games developer Qiiwi Games (STO: QIIWI) has secured an undisclosed non-dilutive UA financing facility from Plan A Games, a US-based user acquisition financing platform co-founded in 2025 by CEO Gary Rosenfeld, with a potential of up to $10m if performance targets are met. The facility funds multi-network UA spend on the hybrid-casual solitaire and word-puzzle game Wordington Solitaire, live globally since Apr’26. Plan A Games’ capital comes from funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group, which reported ~$54B in assets under management as of Mar 31, 2026. Qiiwi CEO Erik Dale Rundberg said the performance consideration triggers only if Wordington Solitaire lifts company-wide revenue to 4x-10x Qiiwi’s highest-ever annual revenue. Interest is charged only on drawn capital, at a rate fixed for the term.

FUNDRAISING

Singapore-based gaming investor Makers Fund has closed its fourth fund at $250m, bringing total assets under management to $1.5B since 2016. Fund IV backs founders across interactive entertainment broadly, spanning games, consumer apps, and creation platforms, wherever entertainment is central to the experience. The firm’s $180m Fund I has distributed 3.6x invested capital, a return it says places it in the top 1% of global venture funds, built on wins including its role as first investor and largest shareholder in Dream Games, in which CVC Capital Partners (AMS: CVC) took a majority stake at a reported ~$5B valuation. “Fund IV is that belief, doubled down,” said general partner Jay Chi. The firm now backs more than 90 portfolio companies from teams spanning London, Reykjavik, Tokyo, Singapore, New York, and LA. Makers Fund closed its third fund, at $500m, in Mar’22.

EARNINGS REPORTS

(1) First close after the release against the last close before it. All three reported before their exchange opened.
Source: company releases and exchange closing prices.

PUBLIC MARKET PERFORMANCE

It was a negative week for the tracked universe: of 64 eligible companies, 23 rose, 40 fell, and one was unchanged, with a median move of -1.3%. The signals below cover the moves with an identified catalyst.

SHARE PRICE SIGNALS

• Paradox Interactive (+7.3%) extended its post-earnings climb. In its Aug 6 Q2’26 report, operating profit rose 37% YoY to $19.2m (SEK182m), around 6% below consensus per SHB, and both SHB and Pareto reiterated Buy: SHB held its target at SEK168 and Pareto cut to SEK155 from SEK160, citing the Gamescom pipeline Paradox would show as the reason to stay bullish. Paradox kept buying back its own stock under the SEK200m program launched Aug 5, picking up another 130,000 shares Aug 10-14 (disclosed Aug 17), and its Paradox Arc label signed a new publisher deal with Blue Isle Studios for Guardians of the Wild Sky on Aug 18. The stock rose in every session of the week, and on Aug 19, it opened a public countdown for an unannounced grand strategy game that will premiere at Gamescom Opening Night Live on Aug 25.

• GDEV (-12.6%) was the week’s largest decline, and the biggest single step came before the results: a 7.5% fall on Aug 19, on volume of just 14,734 shares against a 1.72m free float, thin enough that nothing appears to have been disclosed. Q2 figures published pre-market on Aug 21 put revenue down 22% to $94m, bookings down 21% to $73m, and monthly paying users down 23% to 239k, with profit for the period up 20% to $20m only because sales and marketing were cut 38% to $33m. Adjusted EBITDA still fell 7% to $20m, no guidance was given, and the shares closed 5.1% lower that day.

• NCSOFT (-9.3%) extended the unwind of its Aug 11 earnings beat: operating profit of $123.0m (KRW 173.9B) beat consensus by 31.7%, but strip out a ~$27.6m (KRW 39B) one-off Blade & Soul 2 China contract payment and the quarter only met expectations, with Q3 flagged to cool once that payment and elevated Aion 2 and Lineage Classic sales fade. Shares fell 7.1% to KRW 230,000 on Aug 18 as Korean gaming stocks were wiped out sector-wide on fading post-earnings enthusiasm meeting a broader market slide (KOSPI -1.6%), even as NH Investment & Securities and Samsung Securities had both raised their targets on the stock since the print. A Korea-wide selloff followed on Aug 19, triggered by a US Treasury yield shock and a memory-chip rout, tripping a sell-side sidecar and a five-minute halt in program trading.

• Krafton (-6.7%) beat on the operating line and missed on the bottom line. Q2 revenue of $911m (KRW 1,290.2B) and operating profit of $290m (KRW 410.9B) both cleared the FnGuide consensus, but the group still posted a Q2 net loss of $21m (KRW 29.9B) against a consensus net profit of $133m (KRW 187.7B), and its Aug 14 semi-annual report carries a $254m (KRW 359.5B) first-half fair-value loss on financial liabilities and a new $29m (KRW 41.0B) severance line, with management pointing to the Unknown Worlds earn-out and currency on its Jul 29 call. Shares fell 4.8% on the next trading day, Aug 18, and added only 0.5% on Aug 20 when the KOSPI rose 5.9%.

• Perfect World (-6.7%) filed its first-half report after the Shenzhen close on Aug 19: revenue down 25.5% to $409m (RMB 2.75B) and a net loss of $18m (RMB 118.4m) against a $75m (RMB 503.2m) profit a year earlier, after second-quarter selling costs rose 418% to $124m (RMB 833m) behind the launch of open-world title Neverness to Everness. A Jul 14 warning had already flagged the loss, so what moved the stock was the estimate cuts that followed: CICC took its 2026 net profit forecast down 23% to $169m (RMB 1.14B) on Aug 20, and Huatai cut its target 31.5% to RMB 14.66 on Aug 21, the day the shares fell 2.4%.

EARNINGS CALENDAR: THE WEEK AHEAD

(1) Earnings scheduled Aug 24 to Aug 30, 2026, as set by the issuers and subject to change.
Source: HKEX board-meeting notices and exchange disclosure calendars.

This digest is published for information only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

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WEBTOON is acquiring up to 60% of RI Games Holdings for ~$100m

US-based global storytelling platform WEBTOON Entertainment (NASDAQ: WBTN), the parent company of Naver Webtoon, is making a strategic investment in RI Games Holdings, the owner of the game studios GrayGames and Offbeat. The deal closes in two tranches: a first closing of 2,999 shares (about 20% of RI Games Holdings) for ~$33.2m (KRW 50.0B), and a second closing of the remaining 6,001 shares for ~$66.5m (KRW 100.0B), conditional on Overgeared’s commercial launch. Together, the two closings would take WEBTOON to 60% for ~$100m (KRW 150.0B) in cash. The agreement was signed with seller Redice & Company on Aug 6, 2026, and announced alongside Q2’26 results on Aug 10. It is WEBTOON’s first move to own, rather than license, the development studios that turn its webcomics into games.RI Games Holdings was founded in 2022 by Kevin Tail Han, who founded the South Korea-based webcomic studio Redice Studio behind Solo Leveling and Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint. Its development team’s credits include such mobile game titles as MapleStory M (2018), The Seven Deadly Sins: Grand Cross (2019), Lineage W (2021; also on PC), and Tower of God: New World (2023).

The company’s current product lineup includes three announced titles, all drawn from webcomics WEBTOON already owns the audience for: Overgeared, with 1.3 billion global views; Doom Breaker, with 0.6 billion; and Omniscient Reader, with 3.1 billion. Every title is planned as part of a franchise rather than a standalone release, with an anime adaptation alongside the game. Leading the lineup is an action MMORPG based on Overgeared, developed by GrayGames and published by NEXON for global launch on PC and mobile later this year, timed to the anime’s October 2026 premiere. The two companies plan multiple releases over the next four years.

That first launch is also the deal’s own trigger. Two-thirds of the price moves only once Overgeared is released, and the money-back right runs the other way: if the studio has not booked ~$166m (KRW 250.0B) of revenue over the considered period running from Jan 1, 2027 (or the game’s launch, if sooner) through Jun 30, 2030, WEBTOON can hand the second tranche back to the seller at broadly what it paid. The committed price is therefore genuinely smaller than the headline number suggests.

WEBTOON reported the same day. Q2’26 revenue was $338.5m, down 2.8% and up 5.2% in constant currency, with gross margin up to 26% and adj. EBITDA of $5.5m, above the top range of guidance. The platform’s audience growth is close to flat, with 156.9 million MAU (up 0.5%) and 7.5 million monthly paying users (up 1.8%). The market’s read was negative. WEBTOON closed at $8.81 on Aug 11, down 6.8% from the previous close. The quarter itself beat, but the company guided Q3’26 adj. EBITDA to $0.0m-$5.0m, below the $5.5m it had just delivered, on revenue of $358m to $368m.

The deal lands on the smallest of the three lines reported by WEBTOON. IP Adaptations turned over $27.4m in the quarter (-3% YoY), 8% of the group’s total revenue. It includes $8m from sublicensing titles to third parties and ~$2m from merchandise and IP royalties, with the rest earned from producing adaptations commissioned by outside studios and streamers. Until now, WEBTOON has mostly been paid a fee for that work, while someone else has taken the equity upside.Founder and Chief Executive Officer Junkoo Kim put the two announcements together on the earnings call: the fund “will help us capture more value from massive global hits, evolve beyond licensing to secure strong IP rights, and gain more control over our growing adaptation slate”, while the RI Games investment “will enable us to turn proven IP into immersive gaming experiences”. Tail Han framed the studio’s side plainly: “Driven by our deep understanding of and passion for Webtoon IP, we aim to create games that deliver immersive interactive experiences, bringing fans together while extending the reach and experience of each IP.”

The fund answers the same constraint from the other direction. NW Webcomic Adaptation Fund was established on Jul 14, 2026, as a $100m closed-end vehicle, with NAVER’s N Investment as the 60% limited partner ($60m) and WEBTOON holding the remaining 40%. Its mandate is to take equity positions in adaptations of WEBTOON and NAVER webcomics across film, series, animation, and games.

WEBTOON’s balance sheet is strong, with $583.1m in cash (as of Jun 30, 2026) and no outstanding debt liabilities. That balance sheet and a stated intent to own studios rather than license to them put a new name on the buy side of the video game market. InvestGame starts tracking WEBTOON Entertainment in our public comps universe, and we expect it to appear again as an acquirer. We will be watching whether the Overgeared MMORPG and its anime land together in the fourth quarter as planned.

Kunlun Wanwei is selling Xianlai Huyu for $111m

China-based games and AI company Kunlun Wanwei (SZSE: 300418) is selling 99% of Beijing Xianlai Huyu to Beijing Xinglan Huyu for $111.2m (RMB 750m), thereby exiting the mobile card-and-board games publishing business entirely. The business being sold is F2P digital mahjong and card games, not real-money gaming (which is prohibited in mainland China).

The buyer was incorporated in Apr’26 and is wholly owned by Xiong Liang, who joined Xianlai Huyu as general manager in 2024 and is now its chairman and legal representative, making this a management buyout. He picked up the remaining 1% in Mar’26 and will hold 100% on completion. Kunlun collects half the price, $55.6m (RMB 375m), by Sep 30, 2026, and the rest in three annual installments of $18.5m (RMB 125m).

Kunlun built up full ownership of Xianlai Huyu through three purchases between 2016 and 2019 (deal terms below), and is now exiting the entire business for about 80% less than what it paid. The reason is straightforward: the business’s own profitability collapsed over the same period, from $174m in net profit in 2018 to just $10.0m by 2025, as revenue fell 80%.(1) 2.4x FY2025 revenue of RMB 316m on the RMB 758m 100%-basis implied equity value. The Aug 10 announcement also reports FY2025 operating profit of RMB 208m and net profit of RMB 72m, which are 3.6x and 10.5x. Converts at the Aug 10, 2026 rate of 6.7457 RMB/USD. Each 2016-2019 purchase converts at its own announcement-date rate.

Kunlun Wanwei states the rationale as a strategic focus: the business has “a relatively independent operating system” that differs from the AGI and AIGC (artificial general intelligence and AI-generated content) direction it is now built around. The same board meeting approved a plan to issue H shares and list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s main board.

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

[RUMOR] US-based AI company Anthropic is reportedly in talks to acquire Israel/US-based AI startup Decart for ~$6.0B, which would be Anthropic’s largest acquisition to date, according to a Bloomberg report on Aug 13, 2026. Neither party has confirmed the deal. Founded in 2023 by Dean Leitersdorf, Orian Leitersdorf, and Moshe Shalev, Decart builds real-time world-model AI. Its Oasis model, which debuted in 2024 as an AI-generated, engine-free playable version of Minecraft trained on gameplay footage, generates interactive simulated environments, and its Lucy model edits live video in real time. Its chip-efficiency software is reportedly what Anthropic wants for its own training and inference infrastructure ahead of an expected autumn 2026 IPO. Decart recently raised $300m in May’26 at a ~$4.0B valuation from Radical Ventures, Benchmark, Sequoia Capital, Zeev Ventures, and Aleph VC.

US-based 3D asset and creative tools company KitBash, the parent of KitBash3D and Greyscalegorilla, announced on Aug 10, 2026, that it has acquired artist portfolio platform ArtStation and 3D model publishing platform Sketchfab from Epic Games for an undisclosed sum. Epic bought both platforms in 2021 (ArtStation in Apr’21 and Sketchfab in Jul’21) and states its own reason for letting them go: the two are “joining KitBash as Epic continues to prioritize building Unreal Engine 6, Fortnite, the developer ecosystem, and the Epic Games Store”. Epic’s Fab marketplace is not part of the sale and stays with the company. Co-Chief Executive Officer Banks Boutté said KitBash’s “first priority is to protect what users value most about each platform.”

US-based office and technology products company ACCO Brands (NYSE: ACCO) announced Aug 14, 2026, that it is acquiring GXT Holding, the Netherlands-based owner of the Trust computer and gaming accessories brand, from pan-European investment firm Egeria for ~$57m. Trust generates ~$100m in annual revenue, according to ACCO Brands’ own statement, across keyboards, mice, headsets, and gaming peripherals sold through European and Latin American retail, e-commerce, and B2B channels, which puts the price at roughly 0.6x revenue. Trust joins Kensington, PowerA, and EPOS in ACCO Brands’ technology peripherals portfolio, which the company says will approach $500m of annual sales on a pro forma basis once the deal closes, against $1.5B of total ACCO Brands net sales in FY2025, and the buyer is targeting $5m to $8m of cost synergies within 18 months of closing.

VENTURE FINANCING

US-based AI motion-capture company Kikitora has raised $19.7m, disclosed through an SEC Form D filed on Aug 11, 2026. The full offering was sold to 43 accredited investors, with the first sale recorded on Jul 22, 2026. The filing names no lead investor and no valuation. Founded by technical artist and Chief Executive Officer Astrid Wilde, the San Francisco company builds software that converts ordinary video into 3D performance data, removing the specialist capture hardware the process normally requires.

Singapore-based games publisher 4Divinity, the publishing arm of Nasdaq-listed GCL Global Holdings (NASDAQ: GCL), has raised $9.0m from Taiwan-based memory and storage manufacturer ADATA Technology (TWSE: 3260) at a $350m valuation, a 40% step-up on the $250m ADATA paid in Jan’26. It is ADATA’s fourth investment in the publisher, after $3m in Dec’25, $10m in Jan’26, and $10m in May’26, taking its total to $32m for about 10.2% of the company. 4Divinity publishes third-party games on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation, bringing Western titles into Asia and Asian titles out, with a catalog that includes Black Myth: Wukong, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, and Atomic Heart. The proceeds fund title acquisitions and the distribution build-out behind a three-year agreement with Syngrid Technology HK, under which 4Divinity publishes at least four new games and Syngrid takes exclusive Greater China rights to up to seven titles. Parent GCL’s own market capitalization stood at $67.8m on Aug 14, roughly a fifth of the valuation ADATA paid for a stake in the subsidiary.

Türkiye-based mobile games studio Rotatelab has raised an undisclosed Seed round co-led by Laton Ventures and Arcadia Gaming Partners, with participation from angel investor Mert Gür, founder and CEO of Loop Games. Its self-published casual puzzle title Cube Land passed 2 million installs within four months of launch, reaching the top 50 of the US App Store free games chart and the top 80 of top-grossing. Founded in 2020 by Abdurrahman Koçak and Salih Koçak with co-founder and angel investor Yunus Becit, the team has been shipping games together since 2016, and its previous titles have over 17 million lifetime installs. The studio moved to full self-publishing in 2024, when its first in-house release, Sort Land, passed 2.5 million downloads. Founding Partner Görkem Türk of Laton Ventures said what stood out was “the resilience and repeating success track record of the team”.

PUBLIC OFFERINGS

South Korea-based games publisher NCSOFT (KOSPI: 036570) has approved a loan facility of up to $85m (KRW 120.7B) at 4.6% interest to ArenaNet, its wholly-owned US subsidiary and the developer of the Guild Wars franchise, with the board signing off on Aug 11, 2026. The facility is drawn in installments against development progress on Guild Wars 3, the first numbered entry in the series in 14 years and the first game in the series to be released on consoles alongside PC. It was revealed at Summer Game Fest in Jun’26, with a beta test scheduled for the second half of 2027.

NCSOFT reported its own Q2’26 results the same day, with revenue of $545.4m (KRW 770.5B) and operating profit of $123.1m (KRW 173.9B), up 101% and 1,053% YoY and 13% and 32% ahead of consensus. The shares rose 4.9% on the print, then gave back the gain over the next three sessions as brokers noted that roughly $28.3m (KRW 40B) of the operating profit came from the early recognition of a Blade & Soul 2 China contract payment, without which profit would have merely met expectations.

UA FINANCING

Israel-based social games developer Comunix has secured $20m in user-acquisition funding from Singapore-based UA financing platform PvX Partners to scale Pokerface, its mobile Texas Hold’em title built around live group video chat. Founded in 2018 and based in Tel Aviv, Comunix sits in the social casino segment and will use the facility to widen paid acquisition internationally. It is PvX’s second sizeable UA commitment of the summer, after the $100m facility it provided to Israel-based micro-drama app Shortical in Jul’26.

EARNINGS REPORTS

Share price reaction is the close-to-close move straddling the report date, from the last close before the announcement to the first close after it. Sony reported after the Friday close, so its first subsequent close falls outside this edition. Source: InvestGame.

Eight issuers in InvestGame’s tracked universe reported inside the week, the heaviest concentration of the quarter so far. Roblox produced the largest single reaction: Q2 bookings rose just 8% YoY to $1.6B, landing at the low end of guidance, and the company withdrew full-year guidance, citing “increasing variability and continued updates to our platform.” Q3 bookings were guided to $1.58B–$1.65B, implying a 14% to 18% YoY decline. Capcom posted its ninth consecutive record first quarter, with Q1 sales of ¥70.4B and net income of ¥29.2B.

PUBLIC MARKET PERFORMANCE

It was a positive week for the tracked universe: of 62 eligible companies, 36 rose, 25 fell, and one was unchanged, with a median move of 0.8%.

SHARE PRICE SIGNALS

• NEXON (+24.4%) gained 19.8% in the session on its Aug 13 Q2’26 report, which beat on both revenue, $753m (¥121.1bn, +2% YoY) and operating income, $195m (¥31.3bn, -17% YoY), against the company’s own guidance, on a record MapleStory quarter (franchise revenue up 63% YoY) and continued Arc Raiders momentum (now 16.3 million units sold). The board also declared a special dividend of $2.0bn (¥324bn, ¥415 per share), funded by $5.2bn (¥842bn) in cash reserves built up from recent investment divestitures.

• Embracer Group (+13.2%) rose 7.2% on its Aug 13 Q1’FY27 report: net sales of $412m (SEK 3,943m) grew 24% YoY (+33% organic growth YoY) and cleared the $333m (SEK 3,186m) that the company’s own analyst panel had forecast, while adj. EBIT of $16m (SEK 151m) more than doubled the $7m (SEK 69m) that panel expected, and Cash EBIT, the group’s new headline profit measure, swung to $5m (SEK 47m) from -$10m (SEK -99m). PC and Console sales in the Embracer segment rose 68% to $76m (SEK 728m) after Gothic 1 Remake sold 500,000 copies in its first week. Nordea raised its target to $9.9 (SEK 95) from $8.9 (SEK 85), and DNB Carnegie to $9.9 (SEK 95) from $9.4 (SEK 90).

• Sea (+7.5%) gained 14.6% in the session on its Aug 11 Q2’26 report, which beat on revenue at $7.79B against a $7.12B estimate, then gave back part of the move over the following two sessions. It’s kept here as the week’s largest single-day earnings reaction, even though the net weekly move has since fallen outside the top 10.

• Unity Software (+7.6%) extended its post-earnings run. Unity published Q2’26 results pre-market on Thursday, Aug 6, and the stock closed that session up 15.1%, on revenue of $546.5m against the ~$515m expected and adj. EPS of $0.28 versus a ~$0.25 consensus, a roughly 12% beat. What this week adds is the continuation, helped by Wedbush and Bank of America price-target raises on Aug 7, when BofA Securities lifted its target to $50 from $30, analyst Omar Dessouky writing that the house now sees “a Vector growth runway sustainable through year-end CY27” and reads Unity Ads’ quarter as “an inflection point”. Deutsche Bank and Benchmark also moved to Buy at $50.

• Pearl Abyss (-12.2%) fell 14.5% on its Aug 11 Q2’26 report: revenue of $136m (KRW 192.6B) landed 30% below the FnGuide consensus and operating profit of $48m (KRW 67.6B) 52% below it, as Crimson Desert revenue fell 48.9% QoQ. The company also cut its full-year operating profit guidance from $345m-$405m (KRW 487.6B-572.6B) to $223m-$244m (KRW 315.5B-345.2B), and Mirae Asset cut its target to $21.2 (KRW 30,000) from $25.5 (KRW 36,000) with a Sell rating.

• Playtika (-14.6%) stayed under pressure from last week’s reported numbers, with management guiding to the lower end of its existing ranges on a more cautious view of consumer spending. Bingo Blitz revenue fell 9.5% YoY. Goldman Sachs cut its target from $4.25 to $3.75, and Morgan Stanley cut its target from $5.00 to $4.25. The company’s market cap is now below the $1B mark.

• CyberAgent (-15.5%) fell 15.7% on Aug 10, the first session after its Aug 7 Q3’FY26 report. It raised full-year operating profit guidance to $488m (JPY 77B) from a $317m (JPY 50B) to $380m (JPY 60B) range, but the market had been expecting $539m (JPY 85B) or more, and the quarter itself showed operating profit down 23.6% YoY. Within that, the games segment’s operating profit fell 25.1% YoY even as its revenue grew 20.8% YoY.

• Playstudios (-24.9%) fell 6.0% in its Aug 11 Q2’26 report and continued to fall in every session after that. Revenue of $55.0m missed the $57.0m expected, adj. EBITDA of $7.3m missed by 18%, and the loss per share came in at $0.10 against $0.04. Daily active users fell 18.9% YoY, and the company said the economics of Tetris Block Party are hard to sustain, while The Win Zone came in below its own expectations.

EARNINGS CALENDAR: THE WEEK AHEAD

(1) Earnings scheduled for Aug 17 to Aug 23, 2026, as set by the issuers and subject to change.
Source: issuer announcements and investor-relations calendars.
This digest is published for information only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

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Nazara has acquired Bluetile Games and BestPlay Systems for $303m

India-based gaming holding Nazara Technologies (NSE: NAZARA) has closed the acquisition of 100% of Spain-based mobile games developer Bluetile Games and its affiliated player-engagement platform BestPlay Systems for a fixed all-cash consideration of $303.0m. The two businesses became step-down subsidiaries with effect from Aug 3, 2026, and will consolidate from Q2’FY27. The consideration splits $223m for Bluetile and $80m for BestPlay. A first tranche of $89.5m has been paid in cash, with the balance of $214m due in three installments to be paid before April 2027.

The terms have been amended since the initial announcement in Mar’26. The new agreement replaces the old one outright. Nazara now buys both companies in full on day one, at a single fixed price, in cash.

Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Nitish Mittersain gave the following reasons for changes in deal structure during the Q1’FY27 earnings call:

• the targets’ trajectory made the investment committee expect earn-out payouts that “could go up to 180% of the committed payouts”;

• holding business-specific performance targets over an executive about to run the whole group “would cause some level of conflict and misalignment”;

• under the old structure “there would still be 50% leakage of the cash generated by Bluetile and BestPlay back to the founders, which in this case will now completely accrue to the group”.

Bluetile, founded in Barcelona in 2019, runs 17 live casual and social titles, including Yatzy, Mahjong Voyage, Domino Legends and Spade Stars with 375 million lifetime downloads and 22 million monthly active users. BestPlay, founded in 2023, operates a discovery and cross-promotion platform with 2.2 million monthly active users. Combined CY25 turnover was $153.6m on $27.7m EBITDA, an 18% margin, putting the $303.0m consideration at 2.0x revenue and 10.9x EBITDA.

A large slice of that cash is reinvested straight back into the company. On Aug 6, 2026, Nazara’s board approved a preferential issue of up to 23,970,676 shares at $3.2 (INR 306) each, raising up to $77m (INR 733.5 crore), to be subscribed entirely by the founders and senior leadership of Bluetile and BestPlay. The six named allottees would take 5.87% of the enlarged capital, and none of them holds any Nazara stock today. It needs shareholder approval at an extraordinary general meeting on Aug 30, 2026. If it passes, roughly a quarter of the purchase price comes back to Nazara as equity.

The largest allottee is Bluetile founder Raymond Albaladejo Stauffer, who takes $61m of the issue for 4.67% and becomes Nazara’s Chief Executive Officer on Sep 1, 2026. Nazara states the position plainly: “Rather than receiving additional stock-based incentives in connection with his appointment as CEO, Raymond is backing his conviction in Nazara’s future with a substantial personal investment.” Nitish Mittersain would resign as CEO with effect from the same date and continue as Managing Director with responsibility for long-term strategy, portfolio direction and partnerships.

Nazara reported financial results for Q1’FY27 on Aug 3. Quarterly Revenue was $45.3m (INR 429 crore), down 14% YoY on the deconsolidation of India-based esports firm NODWIN Gaming from Aug’25 and up roughly 9% excluding it, with EBITDA of $4.9m (INR 46 crore) at a 10.8% margin against 9.5% a year earlier. The group swung to a net loss of $8.7m (INR 82.5 crore), mostly driven by associate losses and impairment charges related to its remaining real-money gaming exposure in India. The gaming segment grew 14% YoY to $29.1m (INR 275 crore) on EBITDA of $5.7m (INR 54 crore), a 19.5% margin, with every gaming business EBITDA-positive.

The scale of what has been bought is clearer against this backdrop: Bluetile and BestPlay turned over $54.8m (INR 518 crore) in Q1’FY27, more than the whole group’s $45.3m – and produced more EBITDA than the entire group did.

The company set out the funding for the remaining $214m: roughly $20m of cash already on Bluetile’s balance sheet, operating cash flow from both groups, a component of debt, and potentially equity or stake sales.

This is the largest acquisition in Nazara’s history, and it reshapes the group. A mid-cap Indian gaming holding has bought a business that out-earns the rest of the company, and hired its founder to run everything from Sep 1. Shareholders vote on the funding leg on Aug 30, 2026, and we will be watching closely how the two halves come together from Q2’FY27. Nazara shares closed at INR 352.85 on Aug 6, 2026, up 3.9% from the INR 339.55 close that preceded the announcements.

Electronic Arts has closed its $55B take-private, the largest all-cash sponsor buyout on record

US-based games publisher Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: EA) has closed its acquisition by a consortium of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, 309 days after the transaction was announced on Sep 29, 2025. Shareholders receive $210.00 per share in cash with total consideration of ~$55B. Trading was halted after the Aug 4, 2026 close, and Nasdaq filed the delisting notice the same day.

Shareholders approved the merger on Dec 22, 2025, the European Commission cleared it on Jul 22, 2026, and EA confirmed on Jul 30, 2026 that every remaining approval was in hand. Andrew Wilson continues as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; EA remains headquartered in Redwood City. Wilson also named Cam Weber President and Chief Studios Officer and David Tinson President and Chief Operating Officer.

InvestGame covered the announcement in Sep’25 with no changes in the transaction multiples set then.

Tripledot has acquired Supersonic from Unity for $40m

UK-based mobile games developer and publisher Tripledot Studios has acquired Israel-based hybrid-casual mobile publishing label Supersonic from Unity Software (NYSE: U) for $40m in cash, subject to post-closing adjustments. Unity’s Q2’26 Form 10-Q records the sale as completed on Aug 4, 2026. Supersonic continues as a standalone business under its own brand and management in Tel Aviv, with Unity providing roughly three months of transition support.

Unity disclosed Supersonic’s standalone revenue in a Mar’26 investor update, which is what makes a real multiple possible on a business neither side had ever reported separately.

Unity has now also sunset the ironSource Ads Network, effective Apr 30, 2026, and the two decisions together drove $279m of impairment charges in H1’26.

Chief Executive Officer Lior Shiff said the constraint on a small studio “is no longer building a game, but bringing it to market and scaling it to millions of players”. Unity CEO Matt Bromberg said Tripledot “is the right home for the team and the business”. Tripledot reports ~$2B of annual gross revenue across 12 studios and more than 2,500 staff, having bought AppLovin’s mobile games portfolio for $400.0m in cash plus roughly 20% of its own fully diluted equity in Jun’25.

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NOTABLE TRANSACTIONS

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Japan-based games QA company Digital Hearts Holdings (TSE: 3676) is being taken private by Sandbox Co., a vehicle wholly owned by representative chairman Eiichi Miyazawa, which has launched a tender offer at JPY 1,060 per share for all publicly held stock. The price values the equity at $149m (JPY 23.6B) and represents a 41% premium to the JPY 752 close on Aug 5, 2026. The offer runs from Aug 7, 2026 to Sep 24, 2026, with settlement from Sep 30, 2026 and a minimum acceptance of 5,922,743 shares, the level needed for the two-thirds special resolution behind the follow-on squeeze-out. Miyazawa already holds 42.27% and will tender only 500,000 of his shares.

In parallel, Digital Hearts Holdings has agreed to acquire the game-debugging business of Japan-based development outsourcing company IMAGICA GEEQ for an undisclosed sum, in a business transfer signed Aug 6, 2026 and completing Nov 1, 2026. Approximately 500 staff transfer along with test studios in Osaka, Tokyo, and Niigata. IMAGICA GEEQ’s game-debugging business launched in Osaka in 2011, serving console titles. Digital Hearts is adding order capacity ahead of overseas expansion, citing rising title complexity and more projects in development following the Nintendo Switch 2 launch. IMAGICA GEEQ will redirect resources to contract game development.

US-based gaming hardware company Corsair Gaming (NASDAQ: CRSR), owner of the Fanatec sim-racing brand, has acquired all the assets of Australia-based racing and flight-simulation cockpit manufacturer Trak Racer for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2008 in Melbourne, Trak Racer builds cockpits, frames, seats, monitor stands and motion systems, selling mostly direct to consumer. Founder Matt Sten joins Corsair as CTO for its simulation hardware business, which covers sim racing and flight simulation. The assets carry a licensing relationship with Mattel for co-branded Hot Wheels and Matchbox products planned from 2027, an expanded Porsche license, and partnerships with the BWT Alpine and Aston Martin Aramco Formula One teams. Chief Executive Officer Thi La said the purchase “meaningfully expands Fanatec’s sim racing ecosystem”.

VENTURE FINANCING

Japan-based short-drama platform FLASH has raised a Seed extension from Sony Innovation Fund, Global Brain, NANKAI NEXT Ventures, Sideways and angel investor Nobuhiro Ariyasu, taking cumulative Seed funding to ~$8.2m (JPY 1.3B). Founded in 2024 and based in Tokyo’s Meguro ward, FLASH develops and operates a vertical short-drama app.

Saudi Arabia-based indie games developer Majestic Mind Games has raised $1.45m in a round co-led by Merak Capital and Impact46. Based in Jeddah and co-founded by Majed Anbar and Lujain Albukhari, the studio develops PC-first titles with select console and mobile releases, and launched action-roguelite Tri Survive on Steam in Sep 2025.

Poland-based mobile and PC games developer FunVenture has raised $1.0m in a Seed round from Acquinox Capital, ART-Tech Fund and a group of angel investors including Mariusz Gasiewski and Janusz Moneta. Founded in 2018 near Krakow, the studio builds F2P pixel-art idle RPGs on mobile and Steam, led by Miners Settlement: Idle RPG, which has grossed ~$4.2m across 4.2 million downloads, per AppMagic estimates.

South Korea-based mobile and PC games developer and publisher Sandyfloor has raised an undisclosed sum in a follow-on round from existing investor Kona Venture Partners and new investor Laguna Investment. Founded in 2023 and based in Pangyo, the studio released eight-player team battle royale Great Toy Showdown on Steam in Nov 2024, which won Best Multiplayer Game at the G-STAR Indie Awards 2023, and launches bullet-hell roguelite PengPong on Aug 20, 2026. It raised a Seed round from Kakao Ventures and Kona Venture Partners in 2024, and will use the proceeds to hire across design, programming, art and business towards shipping at least three projects a year.

Japan-based AI entertainment studio megli has raised approximately $0.6m (JPY 100m) in a Seed round from Asu Capital Partners, PixAI, jig.jp and Brave group, structured as a third-party share allotment. Founded in Apr 2026 and based in Tokyo’s Chuo ward, megli builds AI-native entertainment IP under its megli-ai brand, where character design, lyrics, composition, vocals and music video are all AI-generated.

PUBLIC OFFERINGS

US-based video game retailer GameStop (NYSE: GME) has entered privately negotiated agreements with holders of its 0.00% convertible senior notes to exchange $400m of the 2030 notes and $1.0B of the 2032 notes for Class A common stock. GameStop receives no cash proceeds. Around $1.1B of 2030 notes and $1.7B of 2032 notes remain outstanding.

OTHERS

Luxembourg-based games publisher Atari (EURONEXT: ALATA) has redeemed the convertible bonds it issued on Jun 1, 2023, a total of EUR 29.3m maturing Jul 31, 2026, financed through a new convertible loan from reference shareholder IRATA LLC. The same FY2025-26 results, for the year to Mar 31, 2026, disclose the terms of Atari’s Jun’26 purchase of Australia-based mobile games developer Hipster Whale: $29.3m initial consideration, of which $26m in cash funded by a $13.1m bank loan and a $14m IRATA loan plus $3.3m in new Atari shares, and an earn-out of up to $10m over three years. Hipster Whale, developer of mobile arcade Crossy Road, has generated $8.3m of revenue and $4.6m of EBITDA in the twelve months to Jan 31, 2026, putting the initial consideration at 3.5x revenue and 6.4x EBITDA. Atari Group revenue rose 66.5% to EUR 56.0m, with a consolidated net loss including Thunderful of EUR 4.8m, while Atari excluding Thunderful returned to a EUR 0.1m net profit from a EUR 12.6m loss a year earlier.

US-based indie games publisher Devolver Digital (AIM: DEVO) has proposed to cancel its AIM admission from Sep 16, 2026, alongside a tender offer to return up to $5.0m at 16 pence per share. There is no acquirer: the company is buying and cancelling its own shares. A general meeting on Sep 8 must pass the resolution with 75% approval; a matched-bargain facility and a further $5.0m tender are planned within 12 months. The board cites $1.6m in annual cost savings and thin, concentrated trading where founders and insiders hold over half the register. Devolver reported FY2025 revenue of $107.9m, up 3.0%, with $36.6m of net cash and no debt. Shares fell 61.9% to 6.10 pence on the news, against a 157 pence IPO price in Nov’21.

EARNINGS REPORTS

PUBLIC MARKET PERFORMANCE

Share-price changes over the trading week from Friday Jul 31 to Friday Aug 7, for the public companies InvestGame tracks whose business includes games: publishers, developers, platform holders, and toys and tabletop names.

Source: InvestGame, local-currency price change.

It was a positive week for the tracked universe: of 60 eligible companies, 38 rose, 21 fell, and one was unchanged, with a median move of 0.9%. Six of the ten charted names moved on an earnings release, and the week’s largest fall came on a corporate announcement rather than an earnings print: Devolver Digital’s proposed delisting. The signals below cover the moves with an identified catalyst.

Share Price Signals

• Unity Software (+35.6%) rose across the week and gained 15.1% in the session on its Aug 6 Q2 report, which put total revenue up 24% and strategic revenue up 38% with adjusted EBITDA of $160.2m. The same day Unity confirmed the $40m sale of its Supersonic publishing business, covered above. The stock had already gained 5.3% on Aug 3 and 5.5% on Aug 4 ahead of the print.

• Bandai Namco (+17.1%) gained 10.9% on its Aug 6 Q1 report, which beat on both revenue and earnings, and extended the move through Friday’s session.

• Asmodee Group (+11.4%) gained 11.1% in the session on its Aug 4 Q1 report.

• Devolver Digital (-56.3%) fell after its Aug 6 announcement of a proposed cancellation of its AIM admission and a tender offer at 16 pence, the prior close and no premium, for 4.71% of the shares. The move is the largest in the tracked universe this week.

• Playtika (-26.3%) fell 15.4% in the session on its Aug 6 Q2 report, which guided full-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA towards the lower end of the existing ranges, and kept falling through Friday’s session.

• AppLovin (-12.4%) fell 19.7% in the session after its Aug 5 Q2 report missed guidance despite 53% revenue growth, then recovered part of the fall on Friday.

• Coffee Stain Group (-4.8%) drifted lower after its Aug 5 Q1 report.

Earnings Calendar: The Week Ahead

Earnings scheduled for Aug 10 to Aug 16, 2026. Dates are as scheduled by the issuers and remain subject to change. Source: InvestGame.

This digest is published for information only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

View the Full List

MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

Singapore-based gaming hardware company Razer has acquired the assets of livestreaming tools platform StreamElements from previous owner Live Momentum Ltd. for an undisclosed sum, taking on the platform’s IP rights, platform data, and business records. The purchase closes months of uncertainty at StreamElements: the company ran a “Keep It Live” crowdfunding campaign in Jan’26 to keep operating, and in May’26 an employee told creator clients it was preparing to close its doors, after which GamesBeat reported at least two potential acquirers held talks. Part of the fee paid to Live Momentum is earmarked for outstanding payments owed to creators, which are already underway. StreamElements raised $100m from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 in Sep’21, when it counted 1.1 million creators. Razer says the tools will remain free; the platform will keep operating independently rather than folding into Razer’s own software.

Andorra-based Counter-Strike 2 esports organization AM Gaming, also known as Achieveminds Gaming, has been acquired by newly launched Nordic Partners Gaming (NPG) for an undisclosed sum. Achieveminds founder Fabian Broich, who set up the organization in 2021, announced the launch of NPG and will lead it as director. He is joined on the board by Håvard Lehn, Group CEO of Nordic Network and CEO of the iGaming affiliate network Nordic Partners.

FINANCING

Italy-based Digital Bros (BIT: DIB), parent of the publisher 505 Games, has entered into a development and publishing agreement with China-based games developer Chengdu Recursive Dolphin Technology, which operates under the studio banner Indolphinity, committing an initial investment of $24.7m (EUR 21.5m) to build the sequel to the PC & Console soulslike action RPG WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers. Indolphinity was founded by Xia Siyuan, the original game’s creative director and project lead, who left former developer Leenzee in Jan’26. Under the agreement, Indolphinity leads creative development while 505 Games funds and publishes worldwide, and Digital Bros will open a dedicated subsidiary in Chengdu to support local development and publishing. The commitment is the second leg of a two-step move on the franchise: the group acquired the WUCHANG IP rights on Apr 27, 2026, and now owns the IP outright. Released on Jul 24, 2025, WUCHANG drew more than 131,000 concurrent players on Steam around launch, and 505 Games says it passed 5 million players across all platforms on its first anniversary. Alinea Analytics estimates more than $34m (EUR 30m) in gross revenue generated by the game in its first eight months. Digital Bros describes the agreement as consistent with a strategy of investing in fully owned intellectual property with a proven commercial track record. Against a market capitalization of about $212m, the initial commitment equals roughly 12% of the company’s value. Digital Bros shares rose 19.7% over the week, the second-largest gain among the public games companies InvestGame tracks.

US-based AI game-asset platform ForgeGUI has raised $3.2m in a Seed round led by Verdict Capital, with participation from Collective Global and Second Sight Ventures. Verdict, whose founder and managing director, Niko Bonatsos, led the investment alongside partner Michael Fertik, contributed $2m in Jun’26, and a subsequent strategic allocation within the same financing took the total to $3.2m, reported at a $40m valuation. Founded in Mar’26 by Giulio Greco, who was 17 at the time of the round, the platform generates thumbnails, icons, 3D models, characters, HUD elements, and full UI sets from text prompts, with native support for Roblox, Fortnite UEFN, Minecraft, Unity, Unreal Engine, and Blender. It crossed 300,000 users on Jul 28, 2026, and employs one founding engineer besides Greco, with proceeds funding further engineering hires.

The UK Games Fund has awarded Prototype Fund grants to 29 independent UK studios, the largest cohort since the program launched in 2015. The fund awards up to $134.9k (£100k) per studio; individual grant amounts were not disclosed. The awards back original IP development, skilled job creation, and readiness to attract follow-on investment, with funded work commencing in Oct’26. The Prototype Fund sits inside the UK government’s Games Growth Package, announced under the Industrial Strategy and the Creative Industries Sector Plan, which allocated an additional $38.4m (£28.5m) to the UK Games Fund over three years alongside £1.5m for the London Games Festival. Two further tracks run beside it: a Starter Fund of up to £20,000 and a Content Fund of up to £250,000 supporting project completion and studio growth.

FUNDRAISING

Türkiye-focused Drilo Ventures has launched a $30m fund investing exclusively in Turkish-founded mobile games studios, wherever they are based. The vehicle was set up by former APY Ventures fund manager Doğukan Çetin and Swipeline founder Umut Yaka. It writes initial cheques of $500k to $1.5m into early-stage studios and reserves capital for follow-on rounds, and offers portfolio companies introductions to later-stage investors, UA financing partners, publishers, and potential acquirers. A first investment is expected to close in Oct’26. Turkish mobile games studios generated $2.7B in 2025, five times the level of six years earlier. According to InvestGame data, local mobile games developers have secured $1.2B in funding since 2019.

EARNINGS REPORTS

Share price reaction is the close-to-close move straddling the report date, from the last close before the announcement to the first close after it. Sony reported after the Friday close, so its first subsequent close falls outside this edition. Source: InvestGame.

Eight issuers in InvestGame’s tracked universe reported inside the week, the heaviest concentration of the quarter so far. Roblox produced the largest single reaction: Q2 bookings rose just 8% YoY to $1.6B, landing at the low end of guidance, and the company withdrew full-year guidance, citing “increasing variability and continued updates to our platform.” Q3 bookings were guided to $1.58B–$1.65B, implying a 14% to 18% YoY decline. Capcom posted its ninth consecutive record first quarter, with Q1 sales of ¥70.4B and net income of ¥29.2B.

PUBLIC MARKET PERFORMANCE

Share-price changes over the trading week from Friday Jul 24 to Friday Jul 31, for the public companies InvestGame tracks whose business includes games: publishers, developers, platform holders, and toys and tabletop names with a market cap above $50m.

Source: InvestGame, local-currency price change.

It was a broadly positive week for the tracked universe: of 62 eligible companies, 55 rose, and 7 fell, with a median move of 4.9%. Earnings drove three of the five largest decliners; among the top gainers, only Capcom moved on an in-window release.

SHARE PRICE SIGNALS

• Roblox (-25.1%) fell after its Jul 30 Q2 report, published after the New York close, in which Q2 bookings rose just 8% year over year to $1.6B, landing at the low end of guidance. The company withdrew full-year guidance, citing “increasing variability and continued updates to our platform,” and guided Q3 bookings to $1.58B–$1.65B, implying a 14% to 18% YoY decline. The shares fell 26.9% in the session that followed the release, the steepest single-day drop in the company’s history.

• Stillfront (+22.1%) extended the rally that followed its Jul 24 Q2 report, which put adj.EBITDAC at SEK 387m, up roughly 11% YoY, on a 29% margin versus 26% a year earlier, and restated the CEO succession process announced Jun 30. InvestGame identified no further company announcement inside the Jul 27 to Jul 31 window.

• Digital Bros (+19.7%) rose after its Jul 29 announcement of a development and publishing agreement for the WUCHANG: Fallen Feathers sequel, carrying an initial investment of EUR 21.5m, covered above.

• Capcom (+17.8%) rose after its Jul 28 Q1 report delivered a ninth straight record first quarter, with the shares gaining 19.8% in the session that followed the release before giving part of the move back later in the week.

• Ubisoft (+17.8%) recovered the ground lost in the prior week, when the shares fell 12.3% around its Jul 23 Q1 sales report.

• Ten Square Games (+15.1%) extended the prior week’s rally as brokers digested Noble Securities’ Jul 23 upgrade.

• Spin Master (-9.6%) fell after its Jul 30 Q2 report, which put revenue at $436.4m, up 8.9% YoY, adj. EBITDA at $51.6m against $28.7m, and swung operating income to $45.7m from a $52.4m loss. The full-year outlook was reiterated. The shares fell 10.7% in the session on the release.

• Devolver Digital (-5.9%) declined with no company announcement identified inside the window. Its most recent regulatory filing was a Jul 23 notice on the payment of deferred consideration.

• Games Workshop (-4.1%) fell after its Jul 28 full-year results, which delivered record revenue alongside a cut to the dividend.

EARNINGS CALENDAR: THE WEEK AHEAD

Earnings scheduled for Aug 3 to Aug 9, 2026. Dates are as scheduled by the issuers and remain subject to change. Source: InvestGame.

This digest is published for information only. It is not investment advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.