Investments in the video game industry are a constant these days, with frequent purchases and sales of studios. However, something very different is when it is a country that invests in these companies. This is the case of Saudi Arabia, which for some years has been spending astronomical figures to improve its international image, as with the recent purchase of the English football club Newcastle United. Now we know that Saudi Arabia has already invested in companies like Capcom or Electronic Artsas well as yesterday announced economic injection of 1,000 million from dollars to Embracer Groupowner of the Tomb Raider or Gearbox license, among many other studios.
Now it has been the journalist Stephen Totilo who has collected in Axios all the investments made by the Saudi crown by the hand of Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As you can see in the above tweet, it all started in January with the acquisition by $1.5 billion from two eSports groups to quickly become industry leaders. In February, the Saudi fund took over 5% of Capcom and Nexon shares for a total of $1 billion. The next operation was immediate and that same month they invested $3.3 billion in minority stakes in Electronic Arts, Take-Two and Activisionas reported by Bloomberg.
All the studios that are part of the Embracer Group
In May came the purchase of 96% of the shares of the legendary Japanese company snk, just like him 5.01% of those of Nintendo, both by unknown figures. Yesterday the last operation to date took place, the aforementioned injection of 1,000 million dollars in Embracer Group, one of the most active holding companies in terms of studio purchases in recent times and which seems to be going to continue in the same line now that it has obtained extra financing after spend 300 million dollars at Crystal Dynamics, Eidos Montréal and Square Enix Montréal.