Last February, Swedish mobile powerhouse Modern Times Group (MTG) completed a $620 million acquisition of Plarium, the developer behind the blockbuster hero‑collecting title Raid: Shadow Legends. According to Maria Redin, MTG’s president and chief executive, that deal was only the opening move in a much larger plan.
"We set out the vision last year that, after bringing Plarium into the fold, we want to double our size again," Redin told GamesIndustry.biz. "We’ll keep driving organic growth, but to reach that scale we’ll need to pursue additional acquisitions." The timeline Redin proposes is bold: she aims to achieve the doubling within roughly three to five years. The ambition is not new—MTG pursued a similar target in 2021 and, as Redin notes, the company actually tripled its size during that period. The mobile gaming landscape has changed dramatically since those high‑growth years.
Double‑digit expansion has slowed to single‑digit growth, signalling a market that is maturing quickly. What was once a blue‑ocean of untapped users now resembles a crowded red sea, where growth often means taking market share from competitors or absorbing them outright. Acquiring studios is the easy part; integrating them is where many firms stumble. The industry is littered with stories of failed mergers that resulted in studio closures.
MTG, however, believes it has a roadmap to avoid those pitfalls. Before buying Plarium, MTG already owned a suite 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 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 focuses on games that generate revenue primarily through in‑app purchases. Redin says the rebranding is more than cosmetic.
Her goal is to create “one of the leading gaming villages,” a phrase chosen deliberately to foster a sense of community and belonging. Retaining talent and ensuring smooth integration are top priorities for a company that has been on an acquisition binge. "Gaming is the perfect marriage of creativity and data‑driven decision‑making," Redin explains.
"People are our greatest asset, but we must also give them an environment where they can thrive. When we acquire a studio we want the founders and teams to stay on board because that’s when the real story begins and the business can scale.
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. Redin notes that not every component needs to be built from scratch for each studio.
The push for a unified tech stack began when she became CEO in 2020, but the Plarium acquisition gave the group sufficient scale to roll the vision out fully. The company is careful to avoid the mistakes of other firms—EA’s forced migration to the Frostbite engine, for example, caused significant disruption for teams working on titles like Mass Effect. Redin acknowledges that the tech requirements of Playsimple differ greatly from those of Playamp, so the two divisions are being treated separately. "Playsimple’s stack will become the foundation for any future casual‑district studios we bring in," she says.
"For midcore, we have selected parts of Plarium’s tech suite to deploy group‑wide, but we are doing it selectively to ensure the end result benefits every studio. We performed a thorough internal assessment to decide where sharing tools makes sense and where it does not." Plarium’s GoGame marketing platform and product‑detail‑page data system are already being used across MTG, and the company is adding new features to enhance them. Redin emphasizes that the aim is to boost studio output while focusing resources where they deliver the greatest return. Artificial intelligence is another pillar of MTG’s strategy.
InnoGames, for instance, has been generating all content for its Sunrise Village mobile game with AI for some time and plans to expand that capability. Redin observes that AI is being woven into many production pipelines across the mobile sector.
"Most of the people I talk to in the industry are having the same conversations about how to adopt new technology," she says. "Generative AI is far more powerful than any tool we’ve had before.
The challenge is finding the right balance—what parts of the workflow should change, what should stay the same, and where AI can add the most value." MTG is layering AI 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 cross‑studio rollout of proven innovations. When asked whether AI has become essential for competing in the fast‑moving mobile market, Redin cautions against viewing it as a panacea. "I often get asked if gaming AI will eventually replace everything we do, and I don’t think so," she replies.
"Creativity remains a uniquely human strength. However, if we ignore AI we risk falling behind competitors. Embracing it lets us maintain our creative vision while accelerating development and improving quality." She points to concrete examples—capacity shortfalls in coding, art and advanced logic that AI can help alleviate—underscoring her belief that AI will act as a super‑charger rather than a replacement.
Revenue-wise, about 80 % of MTG’s earnings now come from the Playamp division, with the remaining 20 % generated by Playsimple. Redin is eager to broaden both sides of the portfolio. She mentions that Snowprint was acquired a few years ago and that adding five more studios with similar capabilities would be “fantastic.” On the casual side, she notes that Playsimple is currently a single studio but still contributes a significant share of revenue, and she envisions a potential third district that could leverage the company’s core marketing and data platforms.
Despite the focus on acquisitions, Redin stresses that the top‑ten mobile games list changes little each year, reinforcing MTG’s long‑standing belief in evergreen IPs. While Raid: Shadow Legends will likely enjoy many more years of profitability, the company still values a pipeline of new titles to keep creative energy alive. The broader market context is sobering.
Western mobile developers have struggled to produce new billion‑dollar hits, with only two out of 22 titles surpassing that mark since 2020. Even Supercell’s own incubation efforts have yielded mixed results, as seen with the recent shutdown of Squad Busters. Redin acknowledges the difficulty: "It’s hard to make a successful game and then scale it.
But if we stop investing in new games we lose a part of our DNA—creativity, passion, drive." Looking ahead, she remains optimistic about the overall market. With roughly three billion gamers worldwide, the sector is still compelling, even if growth has settled into low‑single‑digit or mid‑single‑digit ranges. To exceed that baseline, MTG will continue to double down on strong evergreen franchises while also bringing fresh experiences to market, using acquisitions, tech standardisation and AI as the engines of future growth.