In February of last year, Sweden’s mobile powerhouse Modern Times Group (MTG) completed a $620 million purchase of Plarium, the studio behind the wildly popular hero‑collection title Raid: Shadow Legends. That transaction, however, is only the opening move in a broader expansion plan, according to MTG’s president and chief executive, Maria Redin. Redin told GamesIndustry.biz that the group’s ambition, set after the Plarium deal, is to double its overall size once more.
“We laid out the vision last year that, following the Plarium acquisition, we want to double again,” she explained. “We will continue to drive organic growth, but to do that we’ll need to pursue additional acquisitions.” The timeline is aggressive: Redin targets a three‑to‑five‑year window to achieve the doubling. She noted that MTG has already demonstrated the capacity to scale quickly, pointing to a 2021 goal that resulted in the company roughly tripling in size. 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 has turned a deep red, meaning that future growth will largely come from capturing competitors’ market share—or, more directly, by absorbing them. Acquiring studios is the easy part; integrating them is where many companies stumble. The industry is littered with stories of poorly executed mergers that end in studio closures. MTG, however, believes it has a clear roadmap for integration.
Before buying Plarium, MTG already owned a portfolio of mobile developers, 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 grouped into two “districts”: a Casual District and a Midcore District (midcore being games that sit between casual and hardcore experiences). The districts have now been rebranded as Playsimple and Playamp, respectively. Playsimple—named after the India‑based studio behind WordTrip—focuses on free‑to‑play, ad‑supported titles, while Playamp houses the majority of MTG’s portfolio, which relies on in‑app purchases (IAPs).
Redin says the rebranding is more than a cosmetic change; the aim is to create “one of the leading gaming villages.” She stresses that the name is intended to foster a sense of community and belonging, which she believes is essential for retaining talent after a wave of acquisitions. “Gaming is the perfect marriage of creativity and data‑driven decision‑making,” she said.
“People are our biggest asset, but we must also build an environment where they can thrive. When we acquire a company, we want the founders and their teams to stay on board, because that’s when the real story begins and the business can scale further.
The only way to keep them is to make sure they enjoy the environment.” Behind the scenes, MTG has been standardising technology and tools across its studios. Redin notes that not every piece of software needs to be built from scratch for each studio, and the scale provided by the Plarium acquisition finally allowed the company to roll out this vision fully. She acknowledges the risks of forced standardisation, citing Electronic Arts’ problematic push to adopt the Frostbite engine across all its studios as a cautionary tale. To avoid similar pitfalls, MTG treats the tech stacks of Playsimple and Playamp as distinct, deploying different solutions where appropriate.
For the Casual District (Playsimple), the existing tech stack will serve as the foundation for any future studios that join that side. In the Midcore district, MTG has selected elements of Plarium’s technology suite to roll out group‑wide, but only after a careful internal assessment of where sharing tools 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 enhance functionality. The goal, Redin says, is to focus resources where they generate the greatest return.
“We have amazing game makers across the group, and with Playamp we want to super‑charge them with a tech suite they can leverage, elevating everything that’s already been done.” Generative AI is another pillar of MTG’s strategy. InnoGames, for example, has been using AI to generate all of the content for its mobile title Sunrise Village and plans to expand AI‑driven creation across its portfolio. Redin observes that AI is becoming embedded in many mobile development pipelines.
“Most of the industry is having the same conversations about how to adopt new technology,” she said, adding that generative AI is “significantly more powerful than any tool we’ve had before.” She emphasizes a balanced approach: AI should augment, not replace, human creativity. “We need to let studios experiment within an overarching AI framework, share learnings, and quickly roll out successful solutions across the company.” When asked whether AI is now indispensable for competing in the mobile market, Redin cautions against over‑hyping it.
“I often get asked if gaming AI will eventually do everything we do. I don’t think so. Our talent’s creativity can’t be fully replicated by AI yet.
But if we ignore AI, we’ll fall behind competitors. AI can help us accelerate development, improve testing, and enhance graphics, allowing us to bring games to market faster and at higher quality.” Currently, roughly 80 % of MTG’s revenue comes from the Playamp division, with the remaining 20 % generated by Playsimple.
Redin is eager to broaden both sides. She cites Snowprint as an example of a studio she would love to replicate globally: “If we could find five more Snowprints around the world, that would be fantastic.” On the casual side, she notes that Playsimple is presently a single studio but still contributes a meaningful share of revenue. Looking ahead, Redin hints at the possibility of adding a third “district” to the gaming village, likely centred 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 rarely change dramatically year over year.
“Our thesis from day one has been a belief in evergreen IPs,” she says. “Raid has many years left, but we also need a pipeline of new games to keep the ecosystem healthy.” She acknowledges the challenges of launching fresh titles, referencing Supercell’s observation that the western mobile market is “coasting,” with only two of the 22 billion‑dollar games since 2020 originating in the West. Yet Redin argues that a steady flow of new games is essential for preserving studio DNA, creativity, and passion.
In summary, Redin sees a mobile market that will likely settle into low‑ to mid‑single‑digit growth. To exceed that baseline, MTG plans to double down on its strong evergreen franchises while simultaneously investing in new releases, leveraging AI, and refining a unified technology infrastructure that can be shared across its expanding portfolio of studios.