By a Jiemian News Reporter
On November 27, multiple media outlets, including Caixin, reported that Saudi Arabian gaming giant Savvy Games Group is in talks with ByteDance to acquire its subsidiary, Shanghai Moonton Technology. The negotiations are ongoing, and the outcome remains uncertain.
Jiemian News reached out to ByteDance for comment, but had not received a response as of press time. Savvy Games Group has also not publicly commented on the matter.
As early as November 2023, reports emerged that ByteDance was seeking to sell Moonton Technology for no less than $5 billion, with Goldman Sachs serving as its financial advisor. However, by October 2024, it was reported that ByteDance had decided not to sell Moonton Technology and had appointed Zhang Yunfan, a former executive at Perfect World, as the new CEO, replacing co-founder and CEO Yuan Jing.
Moonton Technology was founded in 2014, and its core product, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, is a multiplayer online battle arena game with a large player base in Southeast Asia. In addition to this game, Moonton Technology has also developed shooting games like Project: Extraction and role-playing games like Crystal.
In 2021, ByteDance acquired Moonton Technology for approximately $4 billion, hoping to leverage its advantage in the overseas MOBA game market to quickly boost its competitiveness in the heavy gaming market. At the time, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang generated annual revenue of over $1 billion, and Moonton Technology had a mature global distribution and operation team, making it an attractive asset for ByteDance.
After the acquisition, Moonton Technology helped ByteDance rise to 8th place in the 2022 China game exporters’ revenue ranking, thanks to the stable performance of its games.
However, since 2023, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang has faced growth challenges, and its expansion into new markets such as Europe and the US has been unsuccessful. In addition, the game’s domestic version did not receive a license until April 2023 and officially launched in January 2025. New games developed by Moonton Technology, such as Gear Up, have not replicated the success of Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
If ByteDance successfully sells Moonton Technology, it will be another major adjustment to its gaming business. In late 2023, ByteDance’s gaming brand, Aurora Studio, underwent a large-scale business contraction, shutting down unlaunched projects and retaining only a few innovative technology explorations, while seeking to spin off its existing games.
Jiemian News previously reported that in March 2023, ByteDance announced in an internal email that its gaming business would return to its incubation stage, with a focus on stable operations. In ByteDance’s gaming landscape, Moonton Technology focuses on expanding into overseas markets, while Aurora Studio focuses on the domestic market and explores overseas distribution, together forming ByteDance’s “research and operation” gaming business layout.
In April, it was reported that ByteDance planned to package Moonton Technology and Aurora Studio into a whole and prepare for an independent listing of its gaming business. The report also mentioned that the listing location might be the US stock market, and the company had signed agreements to adapt IPs like Star Wars, DC, and The Three-Body Problem into games. However, a ByteDance executive denied the report, saying “there is no listing plan.”
Now, Moonton Technology may be difficult to change its fate of being sold. Public information shows that Savvy Games Group, which intends to acquire Moonton Technology, was founded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) in 2021 and is headquartered in Riyadh. PIF has been actively investing in gaming assets globally in recent years, aiming to make Saudi Arabia a hub for the global electronic game and esports industry.
In September, a consortium consisting of PIF, US private equity firm Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners, founded by Trump’s son-in-law, reached an agreement with US gaming giant EA to acquire it for $210 per share, or approximately $55 billion. The deal has been approved by EA’s board of directors and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2027. If Savvy Games Group successfully acquires Moonton Technology, it will further expand its presence in the global mobile gaming market.
