In February of the previous year, Sweden’s mobile powerhouse Modern Times Group (MTG) completed a $620 million purchase of Plarium, the studio behind the blockbuster hero‑collection title Raid: Shadow Legends. According to Maria Redin, MTG’s president and chief executive, that transaction is only the opening move in a much larger plan. “We announced last year that, following the Plarium deal, we intend to double the size of the group once more,” Redin told GamesIndustry.biz. “We will keep driving organic growth, but to reach that target we will need to add more acquisitions to our pipeline.” The timeline she cites is aggressive: the goal is to achieve the second doubling within roughly three to five years.
Redin notes that MTG has already demonstrated the ability to scale quickly – the company set a similar ambition in 2021 and, in her words, “we think we tripled.” The mobile gaming sector, once characterised by double‑digit expansion, has now settled into single‑digit growth, reflecting a market that is maturing rapidly. What was once a blue‑ocean of untapped users has turned a deep red, meaning that future growth will largely come from taking market share from rivals or absorbing them entirely.
Acquiring other studios is the easier half of that equation; integrating them successfully is notoriously hard, and the industry is littered with examples of failed mergers that ended in studio closures. Redin insists MTG has a clear roadmap to avoid those pitfalls. Before the Plarium purchase, MTG already owned a portfolio of mobile developers, including InnoGames (creator of Forge of Empires), Snowprint (Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus), Hutch (F1 Clash), Ninja Kiwi (Bloons TD 6) and Futureplay (Merge Gardens).
These studios were grouped into two “districts”: the Casual District and the Midcore District – the latter covering games that sit between pure casual and hardcore experiences. The districts have now been rebranded as Playsimple and Playamp respectively. Playsimple, named after the India‑based WordTrip studio, gathers free‑to‑play, ad‑supported titles, while Playamp houses the in‑app‑purchase driven games that make up the bulk of MTG’s revenue. The rebranding is more than a cosmetic change.
Redin says the ambition is to create “one of the leading gaming villages,” a phrase deliberately chosen to evoke a sense of community and belonging. The focus, she explains, is on retaining talent and fostering integration, which is crucial for a company that has grown through rapid studio acquisition. "Gaming is the perfect marriage of creativity and data‑driven decision‑making," Redin observes.
"People are our biggest asset, but they only thrive in an environment that supports them. When we buy a studio, we want the founders and their teams to stay on board after the deal, because that’s when the real story begins and we can scale the business further. The only way to make that happen is to build a workplace they enjoy." Behind the scenes, MTG has been standardising technology and tools across its portfolio – a move Redin began championing when she became CEO in 2020, but which only gained sufficient scale after the Plarium acquisition.
She acknowledges the risks, citing Electronic Arts’ problematic rollout of the Frostbite engine across disparate studios as a cautionary tale. To mitigate similar issues, MTG treats the tech needs of Playsimple and Playamp separately. "Playsimple’s stack will become the baseline for any future casual‑district acquisitions," she explains.
"For Midcore, we have selected parts of Plarium’s tech suite to roll out group‑wide, but we are doing it selectively to ensure the end result benefits every studio. We conducted a thorough internal audit to decide where sharing tools makes sense and where it does not." Key components of Plarium’s infrastructure – the GoGame marketing platform and a product‑detail‑page data system – are now being used across MTG, with additional features being added to enhance functionality. Redin says the aim is to maximise impact: "We want to invest where we get the biggest bang for our buck. We have fantastic game makers across the group, and with Playamp we intend to super‑charge them with a shared tech suite that elevates what they already do well." Generative AI is also reshaping MTG’s development pipelines.
InnoGames, for example, has been generating all content for its Sunrise Village mobile title using AI for some time and is exploring broader AI‑driven content creation. Redin notes that this mirrors a wider industry trend where AI tools are being woven into production workflows. "Across the mobile space, companies are embedding AI into their processes," she says.
"We’re all discussing how to adopt new technology responsibly. Generative AI is far more powerful than anything we’ve had before, and we’re figuring out the right balance – where to adjust workflows, where to keep them unchanged, and where AI can add the most value. Ultimately, it’s about making games more relevant to players and, ideally, delivering new titles faster and at higher quality." MTG’s AI strategy focuses on layering intelligence onto existing tools for tasks such as A/B testing, graphics generation, quality assurance and more. Successful AI solutions from individual studios are being incorporated into the broader Plarium tech suite, with a framework that allows each studio to experiment within agreed‑upon guidelines and then share learnings company‑wide.
When asked whether AI has become indispensable in the fiercely competitive mobile market, Redin cautions against over‑hyping its capabilities. "I’m often asked if gaming AI will replace everything we do, and I don’t think so.
Human creativity remains a core differentiator that AI can’t replicate yet. However, ignoring AI would leave us trailing competitors.
Embracing it lets us accelerate development, fill capacity gaps, and push the envelope of what we can achieve," she says. Revenue-wise, about 80 % now comes from the Playamp division, with Redin eager to broaden the studio roster. She cites Snowprint as an example: "If we could find five more studios like Snowprint around the world, that would be fantastic." The casual side, represented solely by Playsimple, still contributes roughly 20 % of revenue, and Redin hints at the possibility of adding a third district to the gaming village, likely centred on the group’s core marketing and data capabilities. Looking ahead, Redin believes the top‑ten mobile games list will stay relatively stable, reinforcing MTG’s long‑standing belief in evergreen IPs.
While Raid: Shadow Legends still has many years of life left, the company also recognises the need for a fresh pipeline. Plarium is preparing a new title for a soft launch early next year, and MTG continues to scout for innovative concepts. Industry observers such as Supercell’s Ilkka Paananen warn that the western mobile market is “coasting,” with only two of the 22 games that have surpassed $1 billion since 2020 originating from the West. Yet Redin remains optimistic: "There are three billion gamers worldwide, so the market is still compelling.
Growth may be modest – low to mid single‑digit – but by nurturing evergreen franchises and introducing new games, we can continue to expand." In summary, MTG’s strategy under Maria Redin blends aggressive acquisition, thoughtful integration, technology standardisation, AI‑enhanced production, and a balanced portfolio of proven evergreen titles and promising new releases, all aimed at doubling the company’s scale within the next few years.