In February of the previous year, Sweden’s mobile powerhouse Modern Times Group (MTG) completed a $620 million acquisition of Plarium, the studio behind the wildly popular hero‑collecting title Raid: Shadow Legends. According to Maria Redin, MTG’s president and chief executive, that deal is merely the opening move in a broader expansion plan.
Redin told GamesIndustry.biz that the company set a vision last year to double its size again after the Plarium purchase. “We want to keep driving organic growth, but to do that we’ll need to make additional acquisitions,” she explained. The target timeline for this doubling is “roughly three to five years,” a goal that builds on a similar ambition set in 2021, when MTG’s revenues reportedly tripled.
The mobile gaming market, once characterized by rapid double‑digit growth, has now settled into single‑digit expansion as the sector matures. What used to be a blue‑ocean of untapped users has turned into a crowded, highly competitive arena where growth often means taking market share from rivals or absorbing them outright. While buying companies is relatively straightforward, the real challenge lies in integrating them without disrupting existing operations—a process that has derailed many firms in the past. MTG already owned several mobile studios before adding Plarium to its roster, 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 previously grouped into two “districts”: the Casual District and the Midcore District, the latter covering games that sit between casual and hardcore experiences. The districts have now been rebranded as Playsimple and Playamp.
Playsimple, named after the Indian studio behind WordTrip, focuses on free‑to‑play, ad‑supported titles, while Playamp houses the majority of MTG’s portfolio—games that generate revenue primarily through in‑app purchases. Redin says the rebranding is only the surface of a deeper cultural shift. Her goal is to create “one of the leading gaming villages,” a term she chose deliberately to evoke a sense of community that attracts and retains talent.
“Gaming is the perfect marriage of creativity and data‑driven decision‑making,” she noted. “People are our biggest asset, but they also 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 the business can scale.” A key element of the post‑acquisition strategy is the standardisation of technology and tools across the group. Redin has pursued this agenda since becoming CEO in 2020, but the scale of Plarium’s operation finally gave MTG the critical mass needed to roll it out fully.
The company is careful not to repeat the mistakes of other firms—such as Electronic Arts’ troubled push to force all studios onto the Frostbite engine—by tailoring tech stacks to the needs of each district. Playsimple’s stack will serve as the foundation for future casual acquisitions, while Playamp will adopt selected components of Plarium’s technology, deployed selectively after a thorough internal assessment of where sharing tools makes sense. Plarium’s GoGame marketing platform and product‑detail‑page (PDP) data suite are already being used across MTG, with additional features being added to enhance functionality. Redin believes this will boost studio productivity and ensure the company’s investments deliver the highest possible return.
“We want to focus our efforts where we get the biggest bang for our buck,” she said, emphasizing the aim to supercharge Playamp’s developers with a robust, shared tech suite. Generative AI is another pillar of MTG’s modernization drive.
InnoGames, for example, has been using AI‑generated content for its mobile title Sunrise Village and plans to broaden AI‑assisted creation across its portfolio. Redin observes that AI is becoming embedded in many production pipelines throughout the mobile sector. “AI is significantly more powerful than any tool we’ve had before,” she remarked, adding that the challenge is to find the right balance—identifying which workflows to augment with AI and which to keep unchanged. The company is layering AI capabilities onto existing tools for tasks such as A/B testing, graphics generation, quality assurance, and more, and successful AI solutions from individual studios are being incorporated into the broader Plarium tech suite.
When asked whether AI will eventually replace human creators, Redin cautioned against that notion. “Our talent’s creativity is still something AI can’t replicate,” she said. “But if we ignore AI, we’ll fall behind competitors.
AI can help us overcome capacity shortfalls and accelerate development, allowing us to deliver amazing games faster and at higher quality.” Revenue-wise, about 80 % of MTG’s income now comes from the Playamp division, with the remaining 20 % generated by Playsimple. Redin is eager to expand both sides: “We bought Snowprint a few years ago; finding five more studios like Snowprint would be fantastic,” she said, noting the desire to add scale to the casual side as well.
While Playsimple currently consists of a single studio, the company is contemplating a third “district” that would leverage its core capabilities—marketing platforms or data infrastructure—to support new types of studios. Despite the market’s maturity, Redin believes the top‑ten mobile games list remains relatively stable, reinforcing MTG’s long‑standing belief in evergreen IPs. The strategy, therefore, blends investment in proven titles like Raid—with plans for a soft launch of a new Plarium game early next year—and a continued pipeline of fresh concepts. She acknowledges the difficulty of launching successful new games, citing Supercell’s recent struggles with its Squad Busters incubator, but stresses that a steady flow of new IPs is essential to preserve creative DNA and drive future growth.
In summary, Redin sees a mobile gaming landscape that, while no longer experiencing explosive growth, still offers a sizable and compelling market of three billion players. “We won’t see the hyper‑growth of the past,” she concedes, “but with low‑single‑digit to mid‑single‑digit growth rates, we can still expand by strengthening evergreen franchises and introducing new games.” The combination of strategic acquisitions, thoughtful integration, technology standardisation, and AI‑enhanced development forms the backbone of MTG’s plan to double its size within the next few years.