Mergers and acquisitions in the gaming industry are often worth billions and create lots of buzz. In January 2022, the two biggest gaming acquisitions ever happened within barely a week of each other — on January 10, Take-Two Interactive announced its purchase of social gaming company Zynga, signaling a stronger focus on mobile gaming. January 18, 2022, saw the surprise notice of Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard for 68.7 billion U.S. dollars, which was finally closed (after a long battle for regulatory approval) in October 2023.
Microsoft’s gaming IP shopping spree
Microsoft already made news in September 2020 when announcing that the tech giant had acquired video game holding company ZeniMax for 7.5 billion U.S. dollars. This deal subsequently made Microsoft the owner of ZeniMax-owned id Software, Arkane Studios, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks, as well as publisher Bethesda Softworks with its Bethesda Game Studios, and ZeniMax Online Studios. In September 2014, Microsoft acquired the Swedish Minecraft studio Mojang for 2.5 billion U.S. dollars. Microsoft has been shifting towards service games and has been producing less first-party titles over the past years, so it is no surprise that the company’s current strategy is buying up popular studios and gaming publishers to make games for them. In the second fiscal quarter of 2024 (October to December 2024), revenues of Microsoft's Xbox content and services segment increased by two percent compared to the previous year.
Biggest video gaming acquisitions ever
Up until January 2022, Tencent's June 2016 purchase of Finnish gaming publisher Supercell ranked first as the biggest video game industry acquisition with a deal size of 8.6 billion U.S. dollars. Supercell is a mobile game company and the developer and publisher of the top-grossing mobile title Clash of Clans. The race for top gaming content is heating up again as mobile gaming revenues explode, and companies are trying cash in on gaming’s relevance as a social space online.