In February of the previous year, Sweden’s mobile entertainment leader Modern Times Group (MTG) completed a $620 million purchase of Plarium, the developer behind the wildly popular hero‑collection game Raid: Shadow Legends. That deal, while already sizable, appears to be only the opening move in a broader expansion agenda.
"Last year we set a clear vision: after bringing Plarium into the fold we want to double our size once more," MTG’s president and chief executive Maria Redin told GamesIndustry.biz. "We will keep driving organic growth, but to reach that ambition we will need to pursue additional acquisitions." Redin’s timetable is aggressive. She aims to achieve the doubling within a three‑to‑five‑year window. The Swedish group is no stranger to rapid scaling; in 2021 it announced a similar target and, according to Redin, succeeded in tripling its footprint.
The mobile gaming landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. A few years ago the sector was expanding at double‑digit rates, but growth has now settled into single‑digit percentages, signalling a mature market. What was once a blue‑ocean of untapped users has turned into a crowded, highly competitive arena where gaining market share often means either capturing a rival’s audience or absorbing the rival outright.
Acquiring companies is the easy part; integrating them into an existing corporate structure is notoriously hard. The games industry is littered with cautionary tales of failed integrations that culminated in studio closures. MTG, however, believes it has a roadmap that avoids those pitfalls.
Before the Plarium deal, MTG already owned a portfolio of mobile studios, including InnoGames (known for Forge of Empires), Snowprint (creator of Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus), Hutch (developer of F1 Clash), Ninja Kiwi (behind Bloons TD 6), and Futureplay (maker of Merge Gardens). These studios were grouped into two “districts”: a Casual District and a Midcore District—the latter covering games that sit between pure casual and hardcore experiences. The districts have since been rebranded as Playsimple and Playamp, respectively. Playsimple, named after the India‑based studio behind WordTrip, aggregates free‑to‑play, ad‑supported titles, while Playamp houses the in‑app‑purchase (IAP) driven games that constitute the bulk of MTG’s revenue.
The rebranding is more than cosmetic. Redin says the objective is to forge "one of the leading gaming villages." The term "village" is deliberately chosen to evoke a sense of community and belonging, which she believes will boost employee retention and smooth the integration of newly acquired teams. "Gaming is the perfect marriage of creativity and data‑driven decision‑making," Redin explains.
"People are our greatest asset, but they need an environment where they can thrive. When we acquire a studio we want the founders and their teams to stay on board because that’s when the real story begins and we can scale the business further. The only way to ensure they stay is to create a workplace they enjoy." Behind the scenes, MTG has been standardising technology and tools across its portfolio—a process Redin began championing when she became CEO in 2020.
The Plarium acquisition gave the group enough scale to roll out this vision comprehensively. While tech standardisation can be risky—EA’s push to force all studios onto the Frostbite engine famously caused major friction—Redin stresses that the needs of Playsimple and Playamp differ significantly, so the two divisions are being equipped with separate, purpose‑built stacks.
"Playsimple’s tech foundation will become the baseline for any future casual‑district acquisitions," she notes. "For Midcore we have selected components of Plarium’s suite to deploy group‑wide, but we are rolling them out selectively to ensure the end result benefits every studio. We conducted a thorough internal assessment to decide where collaboration on tools makes sense and where it does not." Key components of Plarium’s infrastructure—such as the GoGame marketing platform and the product‑detail‑page (PDP) data system—are already being shared across MTG, with additional features being added to enhance functionality.
Redin believes this shared tech will raise the overall output of all studios. "We want to focus our efforts where we get the biggest bang for our buck," she says. "We have amazing game makers across the group, and with Playamp we aim to supercharge them with a robust tech suite that elevates everything they already do." Generative AI is another pillar of MTG’s modernization drive.
InnoGames, for example, has been using AI to generate all of the content for its mobile title Sunrise Village and plans to expand AI‑generated assets across its catalogue. Redin observes that AI integration is a common theme throughout the mobile sector, with many studios embedding AI into their production pipelines. "Across the industry, we’re all having similar conversations about how to adopt new technology," Redin says. She describes generative AI as "significantly more powerful than any tool we’ve had before" and emphasizes the need to strike a balance: "We’re figuring out where to change workflows and where to keep them unchanged, always with the goal of making our games more relevant to players and accelerating time‑to‑market without sacrificing quality." At MTG, AI is being layered onto existing tools for tasks such as A/B testing, graphics creation, quality assurance, and more.
Successful AI solutions from individual studios are being incorporated into the broader Plarium tech suite, allowing rapid diffusion of best practices. "We give our studios the freedom to experiment within an overarching AI framework," Redin explains.
"When one team builds something valuable, we can quickly roll it out across the company." When asked whether AI has become indispensable for competing in the fast‑moving mobile market, Redin is cautious. "It’s dangerous to claim AI will replace everything," she replies. "Our talent’s creativity is still something AI can’t replicate. However, ignoring AI would leave us lagging behind competitors.
Embracing it lets us maintain our creative vision while leveraging cutting‑edge technology to fill capacity gaps in coding, art, and complex logic." Financially, about 80 % of MTG’s revenue now stems from the Playamp division, with the remaining 20 % contributed by the casual side, which currently consists of a single studio—Playsimple. Redin is eager to broaden both sides.
"We acquired Snowprint a few years ago; finding five more studios like Snowprint worldwide would be fantastic," she says. She also hints at the possibility of adding a third district to the gaming village, though its exact focus—whether marketing platforms, data analytics, or something else—remains under discussion. Despite the market’s maturity, Redin believes the top‑ten mobile games list changes little each year, underscoring the value of evergreen IPs.
"From day one our thesis has been to invest in long‑lasting titles," she notes, citing Raid: Shadow Legends as an example with many years of potential ahead. Nonetheless, she acknowledges the necessity of a fresh pipeline: "If we stop investing in new games we lose the creative DNA that fuels our studios." The broader industry context is sobering. Supercell’s Ilkka Paananen warned that Western mobile developers are "coasting," with only two of the 22 titles surpassing $1 billion in revenue since 2020 originating from the West.
Even Supercell’s own incubation efforts have struggled; the Squad Busters project was shut down after its 2024 launch. Redin concedes that creating and scaling a hit game is challenging.
Plarium, for instance, has a new title slated for a soft launch early next year. She stresses that continual investment in both evergreen franchises and new IPs is essential for growth in a market that now averages low‑ to mid‑single‑digit expansion rates.
In summary, MTG is pursuing a multi‑pronged strategy: double its size through targeted acquisitions, harmonise technology across its diverse studios, embed generative AI to boost efficiency, and maintain a balanced portfolio of proven evergreen games and promising new titles. With a clear vision of a collaborative "gaming village" and a commitment to nurturing talent, Redin believes MTG can continue to thrive even as the mobile gaming landscape matures.