Saudi Arabia has spent ~$38 billion buying into gaming, but owning studios isn't the same as making hits. Riyadh's Fahy Studios raised $1.75 million to build mobile games at home, testing whether the Kingdom can create globally competitive titles rather than just acquire them.

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In the space of four years, Saudi Arabia has become one of the most aggressive buyers the video game industry has ever seen. Through Savvy Games Group, the gaming arm of its Public Investment Fund, the Kingdom committed roughly $38 billion to the sector, took control of the mobile publisher Scopely, bought the esports operators ESL and FACEIT, and in 2025 moved to acquire Electronic Arts in one of the largest deals in the history of interactive entertainment. That is the headline version of Saudi gaming, measured in billions and marquee logos.

Fahy Studios, at just two-years of operation, has closed a $1.75 million funding round led by two Saudi firms, Impact46 and Merak Capital, to accelerate a pipeline of hybrid-casual mobile games. The distinction it represents is the one that will ultimately decide whether Saudi Arabia's gaming strategy succeeds. Capital can buy a studio, a publisher, or a stake in a Japanese giant. It cannot, however, buy a hit. Building games that players around the world actually want to play is a different discipline entirely, and Fahy is a small test of whether the Kingdom can do that at home rather than acquire it abroad.

The Studio Below the Billions

Founded in early 2023 by Hani Hashem, Owis Alsaour, and Fahad Alshibl, Fahy builds what the industry calls hybrid-casual games. Its active pipeline includes RAWR, a monster-collecting role-playing game; Footy Traps, a player-versus-player football strategy game; and Heist Party, a chaotic multiplayer game about teaming up or betraying friends for loot. The studio graduated from NEOM's Level Up accelerator and signed a global distribution partnership with the British publisher Kwalee, a deal the accelerator has described as the first international publishing agreement for a domestic Saudi studio.

"Today's mobile gamers want more than fleeting experiences. They seek games that are easy to pick up but offer meaningful progression," said Hani Hashem, Fahy's chief executive and Co-Founder. "Our goal is to create games that are instantly fun yet endlessly rewarding."

Fahy has chosen one of the few places a small studio can still compete globally without a nine-figure marketing budget. Hybrid-casual games are cheap to prototype, quick to test, and built to be iterated on in public, which suits a young studio far better than the multi-year, high-risk cycles of console development.

A Country that Plays, But has Not Yet Built

The demand for gaming in Saudi Arabia is not slowing down either. The Kingdom has more than 23 million gamers, about 67 percent of its population, one of the highest penetration rates anywhere, and spending per player runs above global averages. This is, by almost any measure, a top-tier consumer market for games.

Since the production of games globally for the last decade has been made in a handful of places with deep talent pools and decades of institutional memory such as Japan, the United States, China, and parts of Europe. Saudi Arabia's gaming strategy under Vision 2030 is an attempt to add itself to that list, with a stated goal of establishing 250 gaming companies and creating 39,000 jobs by the end of the decade. Buying EA and Scopely addresses the ownership side of that ambition. Growing studios like Fahy addresses the far slower, less certain work of building domestic capability from close to zero.

The investors backing Fahy frame their investments in exactly those ecosystem terms:

"Fahy is one of the unique Saudi studios that possess great potential. We are looking forward to backing the team and their visionary approach to create exceptional games and experiences," said Basmah Al Sinaidi, Managing Partner at Impact46. Merak, which runs a dedicated gaming fund and accelerator.

"Mobile gaming is a high-growth sector, and Fahy Studios is uniquely positioned to create experiences that engage players worldwide. Our investment reflects our commitment to fostering the growth of Saudi Arabia's gaming sector," said Abdulelah Alshareef, VP of Venture Capital at Merak Capital.

What the Kwalee Deal Quietly Reveals

There is a detail in Fahy's story that says as much about the ecosystem as any funding figure. To reach a global audience, the studio partnered with a publisher in England, not in Riyadh. Distribution, user acquisition, and the data machinery that turns a decent game into a profitable one still largely sit outside the Kingdom.

This strategy is not unique to Fahy. It reflects where the Saudi gaming value chain remains thin. The country has built consumer demand, tournaments, and capital in abundance, but the operational muscle of publishing, the part that decides which games get seen and how efficiently they are marketed, is harder to stand up and cannot be imported through a single acquisition. Fahy's own ambition to eventually become a publisher in its own right is a sign the gap is understood. Closing it is another matter.

The Part Capital Cannot Guarantee

None of this diminishes the raise, but it is worth being clear-eyed about the odds. Mobile gaming is a hit-driven business with a brutal failure rate, and hybrid-casual specifically has become crowded, with rising user-acquisition costs that can quietly consume a small studio's runway before a title finds its audience. Fahy has already shelved at least two earlier games, Smash & Dash and Town Hero, which is a normal and even healthy part of the process, but also a reminder of how few concepts survive contact with real players.

A $1.75 million seed round buys time and a bigger team. It does not buy a breakout, and it does not close the talent gap that any emerging games hub faces, where the senior designers, live-operations specialists, and monetization experts who separate a good studio from a great one remain scarce and globally mobile. Saudi Arabia's ability to retain that talent, not just fund it, is arguably the real variable.

The Kingdom's acquisitions proved it could buy a seat at the industry's table. Studios like Fahy will show whether it can earn one. If a Riyadh team of a dozen people can ship a game that competes for attention on the same app stores as titles from Helsinki, Los Angeles, and Shanghai, it will validate a version of the strategy that no amount of deal-making can. If it cannot, the billions will have bought influence and ownership without the one thing Saudi Arabia says it wants most, which is the capacity to make the games itself.

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