In February of last year, Swedish mobile powerhouse Modern Times Group (MTG) completed a $620 million purchase of Plarium, the studio behind the wildly popular hero‑collection game Raid: Shadow Legends. According to Maria Redin, MTG’s president and chief executive officer, that deal was only the opening move in a broader expansion plan. Redin told GamesIndustry.biz that the company set a vision after the Plarium acquisition to double its size once again. "We set out the vision last year that post‑acquisition of Plarium we want to double yet again in size," she said.
"And yes, we want to fuel and continue to drive organic growth, but in order to do that, we will need to do more acquisitions." The timeline she outlined is aggressive: the target is to achieve the doubling within roughly three to five years. MTG has already demonstrated an ability to hit lofty goals – Redin noted that the firm pursued a similar ambition in 2021 and ended up tripling its scale. The mobile gaming sector, once characterized by double‑digit growth, has now settled into single‑digit expansion as the market matures. What was once a blue‑ocean landscape has turned a deep red, meaning that future growth will largely come from taking market share from rivals or absorbing them outright.
Acquisitions are therefore the low‑hanging fruit, but integrating newly bought studios is notoriously difficult. The industry is littered with cautionary tales of failed integrations that resulted in studio closures. MTG believes it has a roadmap to avoid those pitfalls.
Before buying Plarium, the group already owned several mobile studios, including InnoGames (Forge of Empires), Snowprint (Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus), Hutch (F1 Clash), Ninja Kiwi (Bloons TD 6) and Futureplay (Merge Gardens). These studios were organized into two “districts”: a Casual District and a Midcore District – the latter covering games that sit between purely casual and hardcore experiences. The districts have now been rebranded as Playsimple and Playamp respectively. Playsimple, named after the India‑based WordTrip studio, houses free‑to‑play, ad‑supported titles, while Playamp contains the portfolio of games that rely primarily on in‑app purchases.
The rebranding goes beyond a cosmetic change. Redin says the aim is to create "one of the leading gaming villages," a phrase chosen to foster a sense of community and belonging among employees. Retaining talent and ensuring smooth integration are top priorities for a company that has been on an acquisition binge.
"I always say gaming is the best marriage between creativity and data‑driven decisions. People are one of our biggest assets, but you also need to create an environment for them to thrive," Redin explained.
She added that MTG intends to keep founders and teams on board after a purchase, because the real growth story begins once those teams are empowered to scale their businesses. Standardising technology across the group is another pillar of the strategy.
Since Redin became CEO in 2020, MTG has been working toward a common tech stack, but the Plarium deal gave the scale needed to roll the vision out fully. Rather than forcing every studio to adopt the same tools, MTG is taking a nuanced approach.
"Playsimple and their tech stack is going to be the foundation for future companies we onboard in the Casual District," she said. For the Midcore side, the group has selected components of Plarium’s technology suite and is deploying them selectively after a thorough internal assessment of where collaboration makes sense. Plarium’s GoGame marketing platform and product‑detail‑page data system are already being used across MTG, with additional features being added to increase their utility.
Redin emphasised that the goal is to maximise impact: "We want to make sure that we put our efforts where we get the biggest bang for our buck. We have some amazing game makers across the group, and with Playamp we want to super‑charge that with a tech suite they can leverage." Artificial intelligence is another area where MTG is investing heavily.
Generative AI tools are now part of the production pipeline at several studios. InnoGames, for example, has been using AI‑generated content for its mobile title Sunrise Village and plans to expand AI‑driven creation across its portfolio.
Redin sees this as a broader industry trend: "Generative AI is significantly more powerful than any other tool we have had before. We are all trying to find the right balance – where to change workflow, where to keep it, and how to use AI to make our games more relevant and bring new titles to market faster and better." The company is layering AI onto existing workflows for tasks such as A/B testing, graphic creation, quality assurance and analytics. Successful AI solutions from individual studios are being incorporated into the shared Plarium tech suite, allowing rapid diffusion of best practices.
Redin stressed the importance of flexibility: "We need to allow our different studios to try different things, as long as they fit into our overarching AI framework. Then we share the learnings and roll out the best innovations across the group." When asked whether AI will eventually replace human creativity, Redin was cautious.
"I often get the question, is gaming AI going to be able to do everything you do? I don’t think so. Our talent’s creativity is still something AI can’t replicate," she said.
However, she warned that ignoring AI would leave MTG lagging behind competitors: "If we don’t embrace AI, we will be slower than our rivals. AI can super‑charge everything we do while we keep the creativity, innovation and vision of our team." Financially, about 80 % of MTG’s revenue now comes from the Playamp division, with the remaining 20 % generated by Playsimple. Redin is eager to broaden both sides of the business.
She cited Snowprint as an example of a studio she would love to replicate: "If we could find five more Snowprints around the world, that would be fantastic." She also hinted at the possibility of adding a third district to the gaming village, likely built around core capabilities such as marketing platforms or data analytics. Despite the market’s maturity, Redin believes evergreen IPs will continue to dominate the top‑ten mobile charts, which change little year over year. Yet she also acknowledges the necessity of a fresh pipeline: "Raid has many years ahead of it, but we also need new games to keep the DNA of our studios alive and maintain creativity and passion." The broader industry context is sobering. Supercell’s Ilkka Paananen has warned that western mobile developers are "coasting," with only two of the 22 games that have surpassed $1 billion since 2020 originating from the West.
Even Supercell’s own incubation efforts have struggled, as seen with the recent shutdown of Squad Busters. Redin concluded that while hyper‑growth may be a thing of the past, there is still room for modest expansion. "We have three billion gamers worldwide – it is a compelling market.
Growth will likely be low‑single‑digit to mid‑single‑digit, and to exceed that we must keep investing in strong evergreen IPs while also bringing new games to market," she said. The combination of strategic acquisitions, unified technology, and AI‑enhanced development forms the backbone of MTG’s plan to double its size and remain a dominant force in mobile gaming.