Scopely’s corporate development team seem to be everywhere right now, spurred on not just by the billions the firm has earned from Monopoly Go but also by owner Savvy’s penchant for M&A.
The mobile games giant was a keen dealmaker many years before that $4.9bn sale to Savvy in 2023, but since then, the firm has stepped things up a notch.
In March 2025 there was that seismic $3.5bn acquisition of Pokémon Go and several other Niantic games, and last month it swooped in for (most of) Pixel Flow maker Loom Games.
And there’s more incoming, of course. Scopely’s VP of corporate development Rob Ricca told us at GDC that M&A is written into the company’s DNA, and “just about everyone” at the company is thinking about it.
So what’s next? Our chat with Ricca below has been edited for clarity and readability.
Your team seems to be more prolific than ever – has your M&A mandate grown since the Savvy takeover?
The way Walter, Javier and others built out the business at Scopely is that they wanted us to be a game-maker and a deal-maker. Some companies choose a lane. From the start we wanted to be both, and we saw the benefits of both from very early days. So it’s really just been a core competency.
If you’re at Scopely, that’s part of your remit, you’re looking at M&A, we’re bringing in studios to partner with and co-develop games. We’re doing larger acquisitions. We’re doing acquisitions of emerging companies, and we’ve really built out the capabilities for that.
And that was part of when we started our discussions with Savvy and PIF. I spent a lot of time with them explaining how we do things and how it’s worked for Scopely, and that was something that got them really excited about Scopely as a potential partner.
One of the things that got us very excited about them was their ambition in terms of building out one of the preeminent video games businesses in the world, and their long-term orientation to be able to support us in those M&A efforts, alongside developing big games on our slate.
We couldn’t ask for a better partner in terms of someone that’s eager to do M&A and to support us there.
It’s hard to see a consistent theme connecting the things you’re buying – Stumble Guys, Niantic, Pixel Flow…what’s the strategy here?
There’s a bit of a misconception, maybe since Savvy and since Niantic, that Scopely is just going to do these megadeals, but that’s not the case. I’d say primarily we’re doing smaller deals.
We’re partnering with development studios that are going to come and work on the next big games that Scopely is building, or we’re investing into studios that have a really amazing game idea, some innovative new mechanic or some new game that we want to get behind.
So we’re doing all kinds of deals. Obviously, the Niantic deal and the Pixel Flow deal are the ones that end up making the headlines because those are the ones that are already generating significant revenue and are going to be the bigger dollar amount-type deals.
But really there’s no typical or particular size that we’re looking for. What we’re doing is we’re trying to find game franchises, business models that we see being long term, enduring businesses. That’s the first criteria for us. Then it’s world class teams. We want to be partnering with talent that’s best in class, and that is excited to go on the journey with Scopely, and be with us for the long term working on their games.
And then finally, we’re a strategic buyer, not a financial buyer. We’ve got to see that operational fit with Scopely. Are there things in our capabilities where we know that once we acquire this company, we can really empower them and be a force multiplier of their business?
Pixel Flow seems to fill a puzzle game gap in your portfolio – are there other genres you want to enter into via M&A? What about sports, racing, 4x strategy…?
We’re not specifically looking at it like ‘we’ve got a gap over here, a gap over there…’
What we’re doing is scouring the market, trying to look at everything, and then seeing what are the couple of things that we think could be the most transformative for Scopely.
If it’s a sports game, well, yeah, that’s something we don’t have in the portfolio. If we find a target that’s going to be additive in our evaluation, we’re going to probably get excited about that. It might help us to build conviction on the deal, but it’s not part of the strategy of what we’re going after.
As an acquirer are you looking to integrate studios into Scopely or are you happy to be more hands-off?
We want to be able to empower that studio, enable that studio, not assimilate them. If we’re partnering with you, you’ve done something exceptional already, we’re coming in with curiosity and admiration on how you achieved that, because we know exactly how hard it is to achieve big outcomes in this industry.
So when we come in, we’re learning from that studio as much as they’re learning from us. We don’t want to break anything but ask: how can we help? How can we be a multiplier of your business?
Is geography a factor? Are you increasingly looking outside of more expensive areas like the US and Europe?
I’d say for M&A deals, no. We’ve got incredible studios across North America and Western Europe and we’re looking for the right deals at the right moment in time. It happens that there are a lot of great companies coming out of a place like Turkiye right now…it’s an exciting geo, obviously.
The other one is China. In the past few years the majority of top grossing games have come from Chinese development studios so it just happens that a lot of the companies that we’re talking to on a regular basis happen to be in China.
So I’d say we’re geo-agnostic. It’s really where are the best opportunities, where are the best teams, and where are the best next generation of games coming from?
I have to ask about King – there’s a lot of noise around Xbox and King has always felt a little out of place within that ecosystem. Has buying King or at least a piece of it crossed your mind?
Yeah…so it doesn’t have to cross my mind, because obviously people like yourself and many in the industry will come to me and say, hey, has Scopely thought about this…? So I don’t have to think about it on my own, because everyone else seems to be thinking about it…!
I can’t speculate on what kind of deal we’re going to do next, what size of deal…we’re always in the market, right? M&A is a core competency at Scopely that we’re executing on a daily basis so every day we’re thinking about the opportunities out there and what could be the best potential fit for Scopely.
What we’re going to do is what we always do, be very disciplined and only transact when we find the opportunity that we think can be really transformative for us and that has real long-term value for Scopely, for the partner, and for Savvy and PIF.
The PIF acquisition of EA is coming so there will soon be connective tissue between you…do you foresee Scopely helping with EA’s mobile games in the future?
I really admire what Savvy and PIF have achieved. One of the reasons we were excited to partner with them is their ambition in video games. And so, yeah, we’ll be excited if we do have the chance to work with EA on sports games or mobile or other things, but that would be totally speculative.
Are you looking at buying PC or console game studios too?
The opportunities that have been right for us and the timing has happened to be more mobile-focused. For Scopely overall, we’re definitely moving further into PC and console…Star Trek was our first PC game, Stumble Guys was our first game that we took across to all the consoles, and then we’ve got games on our slate, at least one of those came through corporate development.
So yeah, it’s definitely something that we’re spending time on. PC-mobile is something we’re seeing become much more common…we’re finding that players are asking for it so we should be developing it, and we’re seeing potential partners that are developing PC and mobile games. We’re interested in PC-console and PC-console-mobile, but it’s just finding that right opportunity.
